by Lynda J. Cox
Her heart leaped with the still fresh sensation of his arms wrapped around her rib cage, his chest pressed to her back. “That wasn’t anything other than courtesy, to keep me from falling to the floor.” Her face felt as if it was on fire as he inched a brow up.
“Do us both a favor and accept the drink, and then wrap yourself in the blanket because as someone rumored to be a gentleman, I cannot allow you to go thirsty or to shiver the night away.” He pulled the small book that Allison had been reading earlier from the interior pocket of his greatcoat and held it out to her.
Allison choked on the sassafras and had difficulty moving air into her lungs. Her face should be blistering as hot as it felt. In the silvered light of the half moon, the title Lost Confederate Gold and the Last Knight of Chivalry: A True Account of a Brave and Honorable Son of the South was more than legible. She should have put that silly little book back in her carpetbag after she tried to read it again during the afternoon and failed miserably. The images of the written man paled in comparison to the living, breathing one sitting across from her.
“It fell to the floor when you got up to walk while the train was stopped.” A decidedly unamused smile twisted up a corner of his mouth. “A word of advice, though. Don’t trust this drivel. There seems to be a need to find something good in the near total destruction of half of the country so the romantics have turned the defeat of the South into a ‘Lost Cause.’ There is nothing romantic about war, Miss Webster, and for the any of the sons of the South to be reduced to the status of a character written by Cervantes dishonors the men who died and degrades those of us who survived.”
She had never viewed the Southern War for Independence as tilting at windmills, but considering the might the Federal government had arrayed against the Southern states, perhaps it was understandable that many needed to find a manner to explain the outright slaughter of more than half a million young men. “I’d like to differ on one point. So far, you’ve been nothing except a gentleman.” It wasn’t totally the truth, but once he actually stopped ignoring her, he’d been everything she had been taught a gentleman should be. Allison pushed the book into her carpetbag, shook out the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “And the accounts written about you in that little novel? Is that all drivel?”
“Miss Webster, I’ll caution you again to not trust any of what you’ve been reading. The clap-trap written about me is just that. There was nothing brave or honorable in what I did. I did what I had to do to survive and protect my men. Lost or otherwise, there isn’t any Confederate gold and most of the ‘sons of the South’ I know are currently very far from gentlemen and certainly not knights defending an archaic code of honor.”
She couldn’t keep her laugh contained. “Surely you have always been a gentleman and never stooped to anything so base as less than chivalric behavior.”
His silence drew her gaze back to his face. His brow quirked up and that cold smile dusted his features. She shook her head. “Your silence is rather melodramatic, Mr. Adams. If you’re planning on being less than chivalrous, I don’t believe I could entice anyone to base behavior.”
His brow quirked a little higher. “I would have to respectfully disagree. You sell yourself far too short.”
Allison found she was at a total loss for words. She was certain even in the dim light of the train car, he must see the color heating her face.
His smile altered and grew and a short chuckle erupted. “Go to sleep, Miss Webster. I shall endeavor to be the gentleman you apparently believe me to be.”
She pulled her bag onto the seat, and made herself as comfortable as she could by using the lumpy thing as her pillow. Thirst sated and the warmth afforded by the wool blanket lulled her into lethargy. She had the most startling image of a great, gray dragon with jeweled blue eyes keeping guard. Alice had always scolded her for her flights of fancy, but this one brought a smile to her face. Was he dragon or knight dressed in worn gray wool? Allison struggled to keep her eyes open but failed. Her last glimpse of A.J. Adams before she slipped into sleep revealed him propped in the corner, long legs stretched out, arms folded over his ribs, and head slightly dipped to his chest. In the dim, silver moonlight his eyes glittered as he kept his gaze on her.
What should have been disconcerting, being watched as she tried to sleep, was instead very comforting and reassuring.
****
A.J. woke before the sun rose. The eastern horizon was just beginning to lighten and the soft gloom that usually heralded sunrise filled the train car. He didn’t remember waking at any of the stops he knew the train made during the night to refuel and take on more water. He must have been a lot more tired than he realized.
Stretching as best he could, A.J. winced as stiff muscles protested. He levered himself up from the seat and arched his back. He’d forgotten how painful train-travel was for him. Maybe he should have stayed in the box car with Dan and Sugar because at least there he could have stretched out and spared his lower back the jarring that came with sitting on a hard wooden bench. His gaze drifted down to the woman curled up on the seat across from him.
She was still wrapped in his blanket, head pillowed on her frayed carpetbag. In the lightening gloom, she appeared carved of porcelain. A lock of walnut had drifted over her cheek, feathering away from her lips with each breath she exhaled. When was the last time he had watched a woman sleep?
He shook his head. Damn it, he didn’t need this kind of interference in his life. He had everything walled off, locked up, and put away. He didn’t need her easy, gentle laughter cracking the mortar in his defensive walls. He didn’t need her warm, soft smile worming through those cracks and he certainly didn’t need her to look up at him with those damn trusting eyes of hers. People who trusted him usually ended up dead and he wasn’t about to have another life added to the total he knew he would answer for to the Almighty. There were already too many on that tally sheet.
Yet, in a scant twenty-four hours, he’d found himself frustrated, entertained, annoyed, challenged, and amused by a wisp of a woman, who at first blush didn’t appear to be able to stand up to a strong breeze. She didn’t look like his mental image of a school marm. How in the hell was she going to stand up to a strapping boy the first time she was challenged by one of them for control in a classroom?
He exhaled sharply. She’d stand up to one of them the same way she’d been standing up to him for the past day, with humor and annoying tenacity.
One of the dyed feathers from her hat lay on the floor at his feet. He bent and picked it up, drawing its length through his fingers in the ever brightening passenger car. For the life of him, he couldn’t say why, he had the overwhelming desire to tickle her nose with the feather.
Without succumbing to that temptation, A.J. turned away. On his first step, his left leg went numb. He caught the back of the bench seat, preventing a painful, stumbling fall to the floor. Cursing under his breath, he pushed himself erect and waited until feeling returned. He finally convinced his leg to move and walked to the door at the back of the car.
He let himself out onto the small, open observation platform. On the horizon, the sun broke over the gently rolling hills of western Nebraska, a shimmering ball of red-orange searing into a sky unmarred by a single cloud. The land flooded with brilliant light and the deep hues of purple and blue faded. If he remembered his weather lore, it was going to be another hot day, just like the previous one.
The wheels clicked in a steady rhythm along the steel ribbons cutting into the land and the scent of wood smoke drifted back. The breeze created with the train’s motion was cool in the first light of day. Over the racket of the train the cheery greeting of a meadowlark pierced the crystal clear dawn. A.J. let the feather he held be snatched from his fingers and it twisted over and over in the wake of the powerful locomotive.
He eased a shoulder onto the metal support, staring out over a landscape slowly rising to meet mountains he knew were still distant. He loved the mountains of Kentucky
. They had been home, a safe haven, and he had hoped those natural barriers would have kept his family safe. The image of Cathy he had clung to so fiercely while imprisoned at Johnson’s Island and then at Camp Infernum had kept him sane and given him hope of a life after the war. Now, after all this time, he could barely remember Cathy, other than a vague, fuzzily recollected image. He had given up trying to recall what his daughters looked like. Instead, he held an image of what he imagined they would be like now if they hadn’t been murdered: married with children of their own. His brother, if Drake was still alive, was twenty-two, the same age he had been when Aimee was born.
Everything he loved, everything he had ever cared about, had been taken from him in one way or another by that damned war and more specifically, by one man. A.J. slammed a clenched fist onto the iron railing. Why could he see his features as surely as if the man stood in front of him but he couldn’t fully recall Cathy or his daughters?
The door opened behind him, dragging him from his angry thoughts.
“I folded the blanket, but I can’t seem to be able to roll it as tightly as you did.”
Why did the sound of her voice lift all the anger and hopelessness from his shoulders? A.J. slid his gaze to her. Her eyes were bright, the tight, confining coil of her hair was disheveled, allowing long tendrils to escape and curl against the column of her throat. “How old are you, Miss Webster?”
She blinked, brow furrowing. “Is there a particular reason you’re asking?”
“Curiosity has killed more than cats.” A.J. turned to view the brightening landscape. “I would hazard a guess, but as it appears you believe me to be a gentleman, I don’t want to destroy that image.”
Her laughter filled the air. “Mr. Adams, merely asking my age or even guessing would not destroy your image as a gentleman. And, to answer your question, I am twenty-eight.” She took a step closer to him, catching hold of the wrought iron railing. “I have always enjoyed the sunrise. It carries so much promise.”
He dropped his gaze to the black rail. If he moved his hand half an inch, he could cover hers.
“May I ask your age?” she asked.
“You may.” He glanced over at her.
A smile tugged at her mouth and added enticing twinkles to the chocolate depths. “I suppose the question I posed was merely if I could ask your age. How old are you?”
Her smile was infectious, A.J. decided, unable to keep his own in check. “Thirty-nine.”
“Married, I will assume.”
A.J. felt his smile fade. “I was. Cathy died some years ago.”
Allison’s hand closed over his on the railing. “I am so sorry.”
“So am I, Miss Webster.” He should pull his hand away but he couldn’t bring himself to move. The warmth in that small hand seared him, shooting up his arm and coiling around his chest. A.J. finally shifted his hand away from hers. He had to direct this conversation from his deceased wife. Cathy’s death was always dangerous ground for him, hammering away that veneer of what passed as civility until the angry monster in him broke free. Before she could ask for any details, under that polite façade of what society called “sympathy,” he said, “Tell me something. What are you really running away from?”
“Excuse me?” Her voice broke and her eyes widened. This time, A.J. didn’t let himself fall into the depths.
“I don’t see you as a school marm. I’m just not buying it.” He leaned closer to her. “So, I’m wondering what you’re running away from. A torrid romance gone wrong? An over-bearing, domineering father? Perhaps an abusive husband? Or are you just looking for some kind of adventure before you settle down and raise a family?”
The very last of her color drained from her face. She backed away from him, closer to the door, all the while shaking her head. What was left of her loosely coiled chignon fell to drape her shoulders with walnut. “I am not running away from anyone or anything.”
Before he could respond, she opened the door and escaped into the passenger car. A.J. studied the slammed door, brow lifting. He hadn’t even thought she was running from someone or something. Talk about taking a shot in the dark and hitting a target dead…She was fleeing and she was frightened. And he had missed it. That explained why she was doing her very best to look like less than even yesterday’s news. He would bet all those millions he supposedly stole that she was terrified to death.
Chapter Three
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings,
and desperate men.
~John Donne
Allison sank onto the bench seat next to her bag. How in the name of heaven had he even guessed that she was running away? And then to have bolted from him like a frightened rabbit…she should have just painted a placard and worn it about her neck. What had she said or done to make him think she was on the run?
She went over every word she had spoken in the previous twenty four hours. She shook her head. No, she hadn’t said anything to make him think that. Somehow her actions must have led him to believe it. Without conscious thought, she wrapped her arms around her waist, trying to keep from shuddering. Unbidden, the image of Gene Oakten rose in her memory, forcing a tiny whimper from her.
Oakten made her skin crawl. Even though he employed her sister as a housekeeper, there was something about him that Allison never trusted. Gene Oakten had come back from the war a rich man and bought Colton County as well as the unswerving loyalty of many of the county’s worst men. She wasn’t the only one who questioned where his sudden affluence had come from. She was just the only one who openly questioned where the youngest son of dirt poor farmers acquired that wealth.
Another shudder cascaded through her. She shut her eyes, hoping to keep the memory of Jack Dupree’s mutilated body at bay. Instead she saw his lifeless form dumped on her doorstep. Her throat tightened over a new scream she refused to utter. So much blood poured over his shirt front from his slit throat and his bowels spilled onto the steps of the porch. She had never, would never forget that sight, that dreadful smell. Bile rose again in her throat, harsh and burning.
“Miss Webster?”
Allison snapped her eyes open. A.J. Adams knelt in front of her, those incredible cobalt eyes darkened and warmed with concern. She realized not only was she shuddering, she was rocking to and fro, and the tears were rolling down her face. Every breath she took was a quick inhale and a rapid exhale. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, mortified.
He caught her shaking hand. “It was a guess, a very wild guess because I was trying to deflect conversation away from my deceased wife… But you are running from something. What is it?”
Allison shook her head. “I can’t tell you. I just can’t.”
Without letting go of her hand, he rose only to sit next to her. He pulled his hat off and tossed it onto the bench across from them. “Allison, whatever you are running from has you very frightened. Sometimes it helps to tell someone about it, if only to put a name to that fear.”
She registered his use of her given name, but she didn’t reprimand his familiarity. She concentrated on the sensation of his thumb moving in small circles on the back of her hand, a gentle caress. Another shudder passed over her. “I have no problem putting a name to that fear, Mr. Adams.”
“A.J. My name is A.J. Why don’t you tell me what could so frighten you? Or is it a ‘whom’ you are afraid of?”
Her gaze traveled from his hand encircling hers to the faded gold braid around the cuffs of his threadbare gray overcoat and then to his face. “You fought for the Confederacy.”
It was a statement. She wasn’t asking him.
He nodded. “I would think the greatcoat would be enough of a giveaway on that count. It is rather distinctive.”
Allison looked away from him. “You wouldn’t understand what I’m afraid of or what I’m running from.”
“Try me,” he urged. “You might be surprised what I can understand.”
Allison drew her hand back. “How many slaves did you own, Mr. Adams?”
His brow knit. “None.”
She shot a narrowed gaze at him, hoping her disbelief was more than evident.
“My father freed every slave held at Clayborne before I was born as a wedding gift to my mother. She was an abolitionist. He died when I was seventeen and when my mother died a little over a year later, she asked me to do two things on her deathbed, one of which was to honor her belief regarding slavery. I was more than agreeable to her wishes. Had Clayborne held any man in slavery at the time of my father’s death, I would have immediately given them their freedom as soon as the estate was settled on me.”
“Then why did you don the gray when it was very apparent that the Confederacy was fighting to maintain that peculiar institution?” Allison couldn’t keep the anger and loathing from her voice and didn’t even try.
He pulled back from her. “I enlisted in the Confederate forces because I believed the federal government did not have total authority over the individual states and the sovereignty of those states was guaranteed and protected under the terms of the Tenth Amendment. I believed the right of those states to withdraw from the Union—which by its very definition is voluntary—was never surrendered and to be coerced to remain through force, at bayonet point, and by invasion broke the compact of the Constitution. So much for what I believed…” He drew a deep breath and dragged a hand through his hair. “Now, why don’t you tell me what all of these non sequiturs have to do with what you’re so afraid of and why you think I won’t understand?”
Allison tightened her arms around her waist. “Some people in the South only fought for one reason. They fought to keep their slaves. Many states when they seceded stated it was to keep the institution of slavery without the interference of the Federal government. Some people view anyone who isn’t white as less than themselves and think that people with a different color skin don’t deserve the same rights a white man is entitled to.”
“If you’re implying that I’m—”