Triumph (50 page)

So thinking, he leaned against an oak, watching the late-day sun play upon the water.

“Taylor!”

Hearing himself hailed, he turned quickly. Brent was striding toward him. The fact that he wore gray and was among the captors seemed to mean little to him. He walked up to Taylor, embracing him quickly, drawing away. “You look well enough.”

“I am, thank you.”

“No—thank
you
. I would be cinders now if it weren’t for you. I should have come sooner. I haven’t been able to.”

“Where is Tia, and what is she doing?”

“And why isn’t she here with me?” Brent added softly.

“Yes, that is an interesting question.”

“She will come soon. We are staying with a family that lives near here, and she is on her way.”

Brent was uncomfortable. He felt as if he should apologize for Tia.

“She is anxious to see you, of course.”

“Is she?”

“And to convey her deepest gratitude. She knows that you saved our lives.”

Taylor was quiet. “I’ve killed men in battle, more men than I want to remember. But there are few men who would willingly be witness to others—even enemies—being burned to death. And,” he added quietly, “I lost one wife in this tempest, a needless tragedy. God help me, if at all in my power, I would not let Tia pay the price for this bloodshed as well.”

“Your wife—yes. But your compassion for your enemies has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated,” Brent told him. “There were times when the North meant to refuse exchanges—to your side, all men are expendable; to ours, unfortunately, they are not—but still, there is word that certain men will be traded. You are among them. There has been a tremendous demand from those Yanks you saved from the fire—before plucking so many Rebels from the inferno. If I’ve heard correctly, though, we’re getting back two colonels and a lieutenant for you.”

“I’m flattered. Do you know when any of this is to take place?”

“No, I’m afraid not. There are pools of blood now being shed at Cold Harbor. The Union army is eight miles from Richmond, but Lee has entrenched, and you know how good our entrenchments are. Perhaps—”

Brent broke off, seeing that Tia had come at last. She stood a distance away, on the little hill that sloped down to the pond. She was slim, and stood very still. Seeing her, Taylor felt a sharp agony as his muscles constricted, and something inside him seemed to rip and tear as well. She knew that he saw her. She started quickly down the hill.

Brent waved to her. “Well,” he said. “She has come, more quickly than I expected. I will leave the two of you alone.”

But Tia had nearly reached them. She tried to offer a rueful smile. “Brent, you needn’t leave us so quickly.”

“Cousin, I am already gone,” he assured her. “I will await you at the house.”

He walked away. Tia stood some distance from Taylor still. He clamped down hard on his teeth and jaw, suddenly tempted to reach out and shake her. She was his wife. Granted he was a Yankee prisoner, but they were all but alone in the copse; his Rebel guards kept watch at the fences, and were pleasant and discreet enough to be looking elsewhere. When he’d last come upon her, they had faced death. Here ... there was nothing between them but cooling night air. She should have rushed to him, thrown her arms around him. They were both alive. Seeing one another after so much time apart.

He held his distance for the moment, as she held hers. She looked far graver, saddened—even calmer than the wild spirit he had come to know. Very beautiful; appearing slim and sleek in a simple cotton day dress, the length of her hair wound in a twist at her nape. Her eyes were as dark and hypnotic as the promise of night; her features were pale.

“Taylor!” she said softly, then fell awkwardly silent again before she found speech once more. “I’m so sorry; honestly. You saved our lives, and I caused you to be here. Except, of course, that perhaps I should be glad you are a prisoner—there’s such terrible fighting going on. Thousands of men are dead. Thousands ...” She broke off, waiting for him to speak. “Thousands,” she repeated. “Not just men—but boys. Real boys.” She looked away for a moment. “Taylor, I’m so grateful to you. I want you to understand that, believe me, please.”

Her manner was very strange. The tension in him seemed to be increasing. Of course, with his guards at the fences, with others surrounding—with him a prisoner—it would be difficult at best to follow pure instinct and sweep her into his arms and do to her everything that he longed to do. But he did, at the least, want her in his arms.

“Come here,” he said.

“Taylor, it’s a camp,” she murmured. “There are guards.”

“The guards won’t care.” It wasn’t the guards. There was another reason she wouldn’t come near him.

“Taylor, I—”

He didn’t intend to hear it. She wouldn’t come to him; he would come to her. He stepped forward, catching her shoulders, drawing her forcefully into his arms. She was soft, smelling more sweetly than he might have dared imagine, clean, feminine. Her hair teased his nose; his senses came to life. He lifted his chin, touching her lips.

She stiffened at first to his embrace, fought the intimacy of his kiss. Yet time made him strong, persistent, and persuasive, and in a few moments it seemed that she thawed, and melted in his hold. Soon his intimate invasion of her mouth was met with a wicked, searing passion that all but matched his own. He held her tightly, felt the supple fever of her form. And for that moment, he felt that, yes, there was something, she was wild and unique, and she was his, and when the war ended ...

Yet she retreated again, pressing away from him. She didn’t even pause to look at the guards, but stared into his eyes.

“Taylor, I’ve come to tell you that ... I mean, of course, I came to say thank you, with my whole heart. I know that you came purposely to save me, that you felt it your duty to come for your wife, that you’ve paid a terrible price for what you did. I know all that, Taylor. My God, for Brent as well! Brent—”

“Brent is my relation, too, Tia. You owe nothing on his behalf,” he said, studying her eyes and feeling again as if a spring were winding within him.

“Taylor, what I’m trying to say is that I know that ... I know that I do, just for myself, owe you so very much and because of it, well, partially because of it ... Taylor, it’s all been my fault, I see that, I know that, but ...”

“Tia, what the hell are you trying to say?” he grated out. He was aware, more than ever, that guards surrounded him. That he was a prisoner.

“I ... plan to give you a divorce. I’ve decided that I very definitely don’t want to have children.”

“What? What does this sudden revelation have to do with now, with the war—”

“I want you to know that I don’t hold you to anything. You’re a hero, Taylor, to both sides, a rather difficult role in this wretched, bloody war. I know ... I know how you felt about Abby, which was why you did marry me, feeling that ... that it didn’t matter, because you still loved her so much. But I suppose every man wants children, most men want children, and if not children, well ...” She paused, her face flooding with color, her eyes falling from his. “Well, I mean, I don’t want ...”

“You don’t want what?”

“I have to go, Taylor.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. There are injured children—”

“That’s what this is all about? You came to Richmond to see Varina, and she lost her little boy anyway.”

“Taylor, I just don’t want—”

“People lose children, Tia, yes. Every little life is very vulnerable. But where there is pain and tragedy, there is joy as well. Yes, you will lose in life! But Tia, you will not deny it while you live it!”

“I have to go!” she said, pulling away from him.

He might be a prisoner, but he’d be damned if he’d let her go. Not like that. He forced her closer again, tilted her chin, forced her lips, her hunger, with his passion. Again, she resisted, yet again, after a moment ...

She fought so hard to deny it. Yet she was on fire, the passion that had led her to war lived in her spirit, her heart, her soul. She could try to deny anything about herself, or the two of them. She could be his enemy, but she was also his wife, and he could make her realize that she wanted the role, desired his touch ...

Her arms curled around, fingers wove into his hair. She returned his kiss with hunger and yearning ... then suddenly, she broke away.

“I have to go.”

“Tia—”

“I have to go. I’ll find a way to get a divorce.”

“Tia, damn you—”

“Stop!” She screamed the word. Guards started to turn. She stared at him, seeing the outrage in his eyes. But she slapped him, with speed and with vigor. And she turned and ran.

Naturally, he started after her. She was swift and fleet, but he would have caught her.

Except that he suddenly had two men down upon him, and when he would have fought like a jungle cat, throwing them off, he felt the muzzle of a gun against his temple.

“Colonel! Colonel, please, oh, for the love of God, please!”

One of the guards who had brought him down was almost in tears, looking at him. “Sir, please, oh, please, don’t make me shoot you.”

He drew in a deep breath and went dead still.

“Sir, I will not put that burden upon you!” he declared.

The guard rose, stretched a hand down to him. Taylor accepted the hand and rose. Tia was just stepping into a covered wagon at the front of the farmhouse.

Taylor closed his eyes, lowered his head, and damned her a thousand times over.

T
IA WAS TIRED, YET
determined that what she was doing was right. If she didn’t take the time to think about the tragedy of it all, and just worked as hard as she could, all the awful sights she saw were bearable. Making a difference was what mattered.

From the third to the twelfth of June, battle waged at Cold Harbor, Virginia. Grant had brought his troops to within eight miles of Richmond. But the Southerners had dug in, and Lee’s army remained between him and his objective.

Tia wasn’t just glad to stay busy herself; she was glad to know that Taylor was being kept from the action. Now, each time she saw a Union uniform come into surgery, she had only to hope and pray that the man was not her brother. She knew that Brent feared finding Ian now more than ever, with the armies so constantly at one another, and she realized that he watched for Jesse Halston as well, the man Sydney had married. But either both Ian and Jesse were surviving the carnage intact—or their destroyed bodies remained on the field, or the Union surgeons were looking after their own with the same speed and efficiency the Rebels attempted. Brent worked at a frenetic pace, since men who could be saved far too often perished if left too long upon the bloody fields where the fighting took place.

It was as Mary had said. Waiting was hard. Working was much better. Much, much better for Tia, because she didn’t want time to think about Taylor. She didn’t want to remember either the way that he had held her, touched her, kissed her—or the way he had looked at her when she told him that she didn’t want children and would give him a divorce.

And then, she had slapped him and run, and the Rebels had jumped on top of him, and she had looked back, seen his golden eyes upon her ...

Much better to work, than to think.

And the work was continuous. From Cold Harbor, Grant began to shift again. The Rebels were praying that he’d decide he had taken his quota of blood for the time being and turn back. He did not.

Lee began to withdraw from Richmond, believing that Grant was heading straight toward the capital. But Grant was not, they discovered, heading toward Richmond. He was after Petersburg, considering it the back door to the Confederate capital.

With the tremendous fighting and the casualties sustained, Tia spent much of her time on the field with her cousin and his wife, using Mary’s beautiful old home as a base.

But on the twentieth of June, a messenger arrived, stating they should abandon the house. It might well be in the way of the circling Union army.

Brent and Mary had packed and just finished with the house by late afternoon when Tia returned. She had remained at the Lutheran church turned makeshift hospital in the town center until the last of their young patients had been removed.

“Tia, hurry, we’ve got wounded waiting at the new facilities,” Brent told her, anxiously throwing the last of his supplies on the larger of the two carriages they were taking from the stables.

“You two go on; I’ll follow right behind.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Brent insisted. “There’s no one else here.”

“And there could be deserters,” Mary added. “Yankee scouting parties.”

“I just have a few things to take. I can manage the small carriage alone.”

Brent looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight on the pretty, residential street. It had become a ghost town.

Dust swirled in the streets, caught by the breeze. The houses around them had been closed down in the hopes that the enemy would find them locked—and go away. The windows that gazed upon them from the street seemed like soulless eyes.

“Brent, go!” She kissed his cheek, then hugged Mary.

“All right, but when we go, you stay in the house. I’ll send a soldier back to escort you to us.”

“I promise. I’ll stay in the house.”

Even as she urged him, a rider suddenly burst onto the street, coming hard. “We have a general down, sir, begging we bring you in and quickly!” he said, saluting Brent.

“There you have it, get moving!” Tia said.

“Soldier, I’ll go to the general; you stay with my cousin, bring her along the minute she’s finished packing.”

“Aye, sir!” He dismounted from his horse.

Tia smiled, waved as Brent and Mary departed, and thanked the soldier for staying.

“It’s my duty, ma’am. I’ll be at the fence, waiting.”

“I won’t be long.”

She opened the gate to the white picket fence, and closed it behind her. The small buggy remained in the stately drive. Hitched to it was the best of their available horses, a tough little mare. “One minute, Suzie, and we’ll be out of here as well!”