Rebel Rose

by Debra Glass

  Staggering and holding his arm at his side as if his shoulder had been dislocated, Pike spat out a tooth. “You’ll be kot-mashalled,” he slurred through bloody lips.

  “You nearly hanged an innocent woman,” Eric said breathlessly. “Her servant was the spy. He tried to escape across the river but I put a bullet in him. He’s dead.”

  Content that Pike had been subdued, Eric turned to where Dr. McVay was kneeling beside her lifeless body.

  Panic surged. Oh no. He’d gotten here too late. Eric dropped at her side and loosened the noose. “Is she breathing?”

  “No.” The doctor was grim.

  Eric dragged her into his lap and patted her tear-stained cheek. “Rose, breathe.”

  Grief welled so hard and fast, Eric wanted to vomit. “This is all my fault. Forgive me. I should never have doubted you. Oh God Rose, please breathe.”

  There had to be something he could do. She could not die in vain. He’d seen medics breathing into soldiers’ mouths to revive them. He could do that. He had to try. He bent over her and copied the technique he’d seen done in the field hospitals. Covering Rose’s blue lips with his own, he blew a breath into her mouth.

  Her body convulsed and she gasped.

  “That’s it, Rose, breathe, darling. Breathe for me. You’re too strong to give up. Fight.”

  She let out a hoarse whimper but her lungs continued to rise and fall with labored breaths.

  Joy flooded his entire being but he’d seen enough dying men to know that Rose’s life could ebb at any moment.

  Pike wiped his bloody mouth on his sleeve. “Good thing you got the real traitor but the world would be just fine with one less stinking she-Rebel whore in it.”

  Eric tensed and started to lurch to his feet but Dr. McVay’s hand on his arm prevented it.

  “Save it, Colonel.”

  “Move out, men!” Pike ordered. “We’ll leave this shit-hole to the Rebels.”

  He kicked dirt in Eric’s direction. “You too, Colonel. You have an appointment with a court in Nashville.”

  Eric was hardly surprised but he no longer cared. What mattered was that Rose was alive.

  “Clap them manacles on him and let’s get the hell out of here,” Pike told the sergeant at arms who’d been standing by.

  Eric didn’t want to leave Rose. He couldn’t without telling her the truth about Rueben himself but he had no choice.

  “I’ll see that she’s properly cared for,” McVay said.

  Eric nodded and shifted Rose into McVay’s arms. He stood and offered his hands to the sergeant.

  * * * * *

  Rose’s eyes focused on an unfamiliar face. A young Confederate removed a damp cloth from her forehead. “Good afternoon, Mrs. O’Kelley.”

  She blinked and opened her mouth to speak but only a croak came out.

  “Be still,” he told her. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal. You don’t need to try to talk just yet.”

  Where was Dr. McVay? Who was this bright-faced fellow? She wet her cracked lips with her tongue. “Where—” She knew she’d formed the word with her lips but no sound came out.

  “Hush now,” the Confederate said. “I’m Dr. Roberts, the surgeon for the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment. You’re going to be just fine but it’s going to take some time.”

  Rose tried to swallow—and to remember.

  She’d confessed to being a spy. The Yankees had put her in the Florence jail and then that awful Pike…

  She shuddered.

  Her memory came back with sickening force. Pike had tried to hang her and then… Oh God, no. Eric had killed Rueben.

  Panic unfurled through her limbs and Rose tried to sit up but Dr. Roberts urged her back down on the pillows. “You’re not ready to get up just yet, Mrs. O’Kelley. Be still.”

  Another Confederate appeared in the doorway. He looked to be about the same age as the young doctor and also surprised to see her awake. “How’s your patient?”

  “She’s giving me more trouble than one of the boys, General Smith.”

  The boy general’s dimples deepened with his handsome smile. “Mind the doctor, missy. He’s a good doctor. My only complaint is that he’s a little too fond of being at front for my taste.”

  The general’s humor did little to lighten Rose’s worried mind. Involuntarily, her hand flew to her throat as she tried to speak. She discovered a loosely wrapped bandage there. Awful images threatened to overwhelm her but she shook them off. “Ru—”

  It was no use. She couldn’t form a word. Still, she tried again. “Rub—”

  “Rueben?” the general asked, his gaze darting from hers to the doctor’s and back again.

  She nodded and the room suddenly became a flurry of activity. Queenie burst into the room excitedly. A broad smile stretched across her face. “Law Jesus, Miss Rose. We didn’t think you’d ever wake up.”

  Queenie put down the bundle of clean linen she’d brought up and rushed into Rose’s open arms. Rose clung, wanting to say she was sorry, wanting to say she’d tried to save Rueben but she physically could not utter the words.

  Hot tears streamed down her cheeks and she sobbed against Queenie’s comforting shoulder.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs and into the room. “Miss Rose!”

  Rose’s eyes widened at the sight of Rueben. He wasn’t dead! The last thing she’d heard was that Eric had shot him. But here he stood whole and well and alive. Rose’s tears of sorrow turned into tears of joy. She did not bother batting them away but instead, reached for her friend’s hand.

  Rueben’s big coffee-colored hands clamped around her hand.

  “I…I thought…dead,” she managed, her voice never rising above a hoarse whisper.

  Rueben shook his head. “No’m. I told the colonel what I did and he took me straightaway to a boat, put me in it and sent me across the river. He told me not to come back until I came with the Confederates.”

  Rose stared. Eric had done that? For Rueben? She started to shake.

  “Honey, that colonel kept that devil Pike from killing you,” Queenie added softly as she dabbed Rose’s tears with the hem of her own apron.

  Rose blinked as her mind filled with the images and sounds of that awful day. “How…long…”

  “It’s been a week,” Queenie said.

  Rose wilted back onto the pillows. “E…Eric?”

  Queenie and Rueben exchanged glances that made Rose uneasy. “Oh, he long gone with them Yankees,” Queenie said. “They arrested him.”

  Rose’s lips parted. Exhausted and weak, she turned her head and stared blankly at the drapes. Eric. He’d lied to his own men to save to Rueben—and to save her. Where was he now? What would happen to him?

  If Pike had anything to do with it, Rose shuddered to think of the awful possibilities. Pike was not above fabricating facts to implicate Eric.

  She turned and looked at Rueben once more. “Do…the Yankees…know he…let you…go?”

  Rueben shook his head. “I only came back across yesterday with Cheatham’s division. Queenie was the only one who knew where I really was.”

  In all probability, she would never see Eric again. Her insides hollowed. She’d thought she hated him. She’d never considered that she might come to care for him. To love him.

  Until now.

  Rose’s gaze slid to the young doctor’s. “Is…there…fighting north of here?” It was a foolish question. She knew the Confederates would chase the Yankees all the way to Nashville and then some if they could.

  “There’s been some pretty fierce skirmishing at Happy Hollow,” he said.

  Rose bit her bottom lip. She knew the Yankees had fortified the cliff on the other side of Shoals Creek just six miles north of Florence. Hopefully, Eric had not been involved. Squeezing her eyes shut, she cursed the war.

  After Billy died, she’d promised herself she would never care for another man—especially one in a uniform. But her heart had given her no choice in the matter.

&nbs
p; It didn’t seem to matter either that she’d only known Eric a few days before they were separated. Whatever had happened between them had been intense. Dangerously so. But dismally, Rose wondered if it had ever been real.

  * * * * *

  A bullet whizzed past Eric’s head. He shook his hands in yet another futile attempt to wrest free of his shackles. “For God’s sake, have mercy and let me fight.”

  Pike fired his revolver into the acrid bank of gun smoke. Horses shrieked. Men screamed.

  A soldier standing less than an arm’s breadth from Pike stilled and then slumped to the ground. Blood oozed from a wound over one of the man’s eyes.

  “Goddammit, Pike!” Eric yelled.

  Pike had taken it upon himself to personally guard and chide Eric this last week. Pike had even dragged him out of Florence before he could find out if Rose had lived or died.

  Pike whirled, his face inflamed, eyes blazing. He pointed his revolver at Eric.

  Eric gaped. The general was a lunatic but surely, he wouldn’t gun down one of his own men. But Pike did the unthinkable. He thumbed back the hammer and pointed the revolver squarely at Eric’s chest.

  “You’re mad!” Eric hollered over the din of bullets and voices.

  Pike grinned and instinctively, Eric twisted his head as not one, but two shots rang out. The bullet hit Eric’s shoulder like a mule kick and as he staggered backward, he saw Pike’s wild eyes widen. Portions of the man’s brain melted from the exit wound in the front of his forehead.

  Mud spattered and Eric realized he’d dropped to his knees. His shocked gaze left Pike and swiveled to his own shoulder where bright red blood contrasted the dark blue of his uniform coat.

  Black circles danced in his eyes and the searing pain in his chest eddied away. Images of Rose assailed him and he wondered if he was dying, if her spirit was coming to take his.

  Rose.

  He’d been sent to Florence to entrap her. He’d ended up becoming perilously infatuated with her. It occurred to him that if he lived through this, he would go back to find her and he would make her his no matter what the cost.

  The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the silver moon on Confederate General Pat Cleburne’s battle flag charging toward him.

  Chapter Ten

  Rose sat in the parlor wrapped warmly in blankets. She’d barely been on her feet since the incident but it wasn’t so much because she was still weak from her ordeal. Her thoughts were consumed with Eric.

  Reports of violent skirmishing poured into Florence every day. Wounded from both sides were brought back by the wagon load and installed anywhere they found a place for them.

  The severely injured were taken to the roadhouse where a team of surgeons worked round the clock lobbing off infected and irreparably wounded limbs.

  Because Rose was giving quarter to Dr. Roberts and his charming commanding general, none of the wounded had been brought to her house. But if the skirmishing was as bad as they said, it wouldn’t be long.

  Rose’s thoughts drifted to the day not so long ago when Eric had shown up on her doorstep and announced he would be quartering here.

  She’d never before met a man whose presence dominated her in such a thoroughly sexual way. At first sight, she’d been unable to wrest him from her thoughts. She had wanted him with such intense passion she’d thought she would die if she didn’t have him.

  And now, not knowing where he was or what had become of him…

  Surely, they had taken him on toward Nashville. But there was little she could do other than write an appeal on his behalf to some superior officer.

  Rueben burst into the room, hat in his hands. His eyes were wide and his forehead creased. Instinctively, Rose knew something was wrong.

  “Miss Rose,” he said breathlessly. “They brought him back. He’s at the roadhouse.”

  Rose did not have to ask who Rueben meant. Instantly, she knew it was Eric. Shooting to her feet, she threw off the blankets. “Is he badly hurt?” she croaked as she and Rueben stole out the front door.

  When Rueben did not immediately answer, panic seized her. She stopped and stared. “Rueben—” Her voice was still only a little above a whisper. The doctors had told her she might never fully recover.

  “I think you best get down there,” he said quietly.

  Rose gathered up her black skirts and fled as fast as her feet would carry her the two blocks toward the roadhouse.

  She hesitated when she saw the wounded lying on pallets all around the property. Her blood turned icy. A thousand horrible thoughts raced through her head. Was Eric here? Was he alive? Was he badly wounded?

  “Where is he?” she asked, knowing only the most severely injured would be inside—and knowing what Rueben’s answer was going to be.

  Rueben gulped. “They were taking him to the operating room when I left to get you.”

  Rose shook. She carefully threaded her way through the wounded soldiers and around to the back of the building. Horror-struck, she recoiled at the sight of a pile of severed arms and legs which lay rotting in the afternoon sun. Flies buzzed around the macabre mound. One soldier shooed a mangy dog away.

  Rose’s resolve wavered but the need to see Eric overrode it. Purposely avoiding the stinking pile, she skirted the roadhouse and slipped into the door of the makeshift operating room. She immediately wished she hadn’t.

  The sharp tang of blood, cauterized flesh, and the sickening stench of gangrene assaulted her nostrils.

  “Ma’am, this is no place for you,” one of the surgeons yelled.

  She tore her gaze from the bloody man on the table. At least it wasn’t Eric. “Colonel Skaarsberg,” she gasped, covering her mouth and her nose with the back of her hand.

  The surgeon shrugged toward the next room.

  Rose glanced back at Rueben. She was trembling so badly she feared she would faint. Thankfully, Rueben stepped into the room, took her elbow and ushered her around the team of doctors.

  One of Rose’s neighbors, Olivia O’Neal, knelt and covered a soldier’s face with the flimsy blanket he lay under. “You can clear this spot,” she called to an orderly.

  Panic welled. Rose’s gaze swept the men lying on makeshift beds on the floor, slamming to a halt when she recognized Eric’s blond mane. His face was drawn and pale. Deathly pale. With his eyes closed, Rose feared he’d already died.

  “Eric,” she cried as she dropped at his side.

  He didn’t move.

  Terror flooded Rose. Her insides hollowed.

  Rueben knelt next to him and pressed his fingers to Eric’s throat. “He’s still alive.”

  Rose’s eyes closed briefly. She brushed his hair back and he stirred. “What happened to this man?” she asked Mrs. O’Neal.

  Mrs. O’Neal dabbed her apron against the perspiration on her forehead. “He was shot in the chest. The bullet went clean through.”

  “He’s burning up with fever,” Rose said hoarsely. Her gaze searched Rueben’s. “Can we move him to the house?”

  “I’ll go get the wagon,” Rueben said and started toward the door.

  “You can’t take him. When he recovers we’re sending him along with these other Yankee prisoners to Andersonville,” the orderly interjected.

  “But he saved my life,” Rose objected. “He saved Rueben’s life. He was the quartermaster here and saw to it the Confederate and Union wounded alike got medicine. He made an exception for James Martin and sent him home instead of to prison.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Not my orders,” the orderly said.

  “At least let me take him home to convalesce,” Rose said.

  “I’ll vouch for him. He’s a gentleman,” Olivia O’Neal added.

  The orderly stared at Mrs. O’Neal for a moment. Her husband was a brigadier general and her word was as good as gold among the Confederates.

  “We can carry him on a stretcher,” the orderly consented. “We’ve been moving men out to the surrounding houses all day and it’ll free up mu
ch-needed space here.”

  “Yes, please do,” Rose said. Her gaze riveted to Eric’s lifeless face once more.

  * * * * *

  The orderlies were unable to carry Eric up the stairs so Rose and Rueben brought her own mattress into the parlor.

  Eric rested fitfully. Rose stayed by his side, pressing cool compresses to his head and carrying out the painful task of keeping his bandages changed and clean.

  His wound looked angry, although there were no dark tendrils, which would indicate blood poisoning, radiating from it. Queenie had cut up bandages and Rose had finally staunched the bleeding.

  She knew better than to think that since he was still alive that he was safe. She’d seen a number of soldiers take sudden downward spirals and die.

  By the light of one lamp, he did not look any better than he had when she’d found him at the roadhouse. Despite the number of people in her house, it was deathly quiet. The others were all sleeping—everyone but Rose.

  She yawned, the movement causing her throat to ache anew. She winced, recalling how Eric had saved her life. He’d risked his own reputation and his life in order to save her. She’d thought he’d killed Rueben but he’d shown him mercy when Rueben was guilty of spying on Eric’s own countrymen.

  Why? Why would he do that for her?

  Her entire being thrummed with a possibility that might never come to be. But fraught with wonder, Rose did not know if his actions were because he felt guilt that he had compromised her—or because she might mean more to him.

  The one thing she did know was that she did not want to lose him.

  Something splashed on Eric’s cheek and Rose realized she was crying. Sniffing, she batted the tears away.

  Eric moaned.

  “Eric?” she whispered. She tried to tell herself that he’d moaned in his sleep all throughout the day. It didn’t mean anything had changed.

  His lashes fluttered open and his eyes slowly focused on her face.

  Rose’s pulse skittered. “You’re with me,” she said. “You’re safe, now.”

  Gratitude shone in his eyes. “Hold me,” he managed.