From Tyne, Jesse learned that they were the only ones who remained on the estate—the two of them, another son, David, and Janey.
He also realized that they were loyal. Whatever came in the future, they would not be leaving Kiernan. That gave him a feeling of some relief. Irritably, he wondered why. After all, if everyone deserted her, then Kiernan might be inclined to travel farther south and keep herself safe.
Neither Kiernan nor the children dined with him at eight thirty that evening.
Janey, however, presented him with a well-seasoned chicken pot pie. It was one of the best-tasting dishes he had eaten since Virginia seceded from the Union.
He was exhausted by the time he climbed upstairs to strip down and stretch out on his bed, so exhausted that he should have slept instantly.
He didn’t.
He knew that she was there, just behind the wall. He could leave his room and burst in on hers, and he could force her into his arms, and …
No, dammit, he wouldn’t do it, ever. The choice had to be hers.
He groaned, turned over, and slept at long last, wondering if he was strong enough to let the choice remain hers. She had told him often enough that she would despise him if he went north.
He had ridden north, and he was wearing blue.
Sometime in the night, he finally slept.
* * *
Downstairs in the dining room, he breakfasted alone. Janey served him a stack of hotcakes while he read the most recent issue of Harper’s Weekly, brought to him by one of his new company, a man who had taken up residence in a tent on the lawn along with his fellow soldiers.
“Where is Mrs. Miller this morning?” he asked Janey.
“Why, she done gone into town, Yankee.”
“I see,” he said to her. He complimented her on her coffee, then went out to supervise the setup of his hospital facilities in the large entry hallway. Cots had arrived, bandages, and his surgery equipment contained in his special black bag—the one he refused to ride into battle without, the one with all his field instruments.
By afternoon, Montemarte had been transformed.
By early evening, the first of Jesse’s patients had arrived.
A middle-aged soldier who had weathered the war in Mexico and a great deal of action in the West was carried in by his company just as twilight came. Skirmishing was going on in the woods to the west of them. There would be more patients soon.
Jesse hadn’t expected help from the household at Montemarte, and he didn’t really need it. He had a company of twenty able-bodied soldiers to do his bidding, and two of his men were excellent orderlies.
But Tyne happened to be on the porch when the wounded soldier arrived, and Tyne helped carry him up and into the surgery he had created from the Miller’s downstairs office. Absently, Jesse told Tyne that it was necessary to keep the man still while he inspected his leg.
Later, after he had dug out the ball, found that the break was clean, and set the splint, he realized he had given Tyne orders through the whole operation, and that the powerful Negro had silently given him some of the finest help he had ever received in the operating theater.
Nor had he expected anything from Kiernan. She had insisted that she wouldn’t leave, but she gave him a very wide berth. When he finished with his patient at last, cleaned up, and came down to the dining room, Janey informed him that Miz Kiernan had retired for the evening, as had the children.
In the morning he was surprised to discover that Kiernan had been in to see his patient. Speaking with the bedridden veteran, Jesse asked him how he had passed his night.
“Right fine, Captain, right fine.”
“How’s the pain?”
“It’s there, but it could be worse.”
The man was a grizzled old soldier with salt-and-pepper hair and a fine dark beard. He grinned. “Well, I was feeling the worse for it, but then I woke up, and there, sure as rain, was this angel. She was just standing over me, and when I opened my eyes, she asked me how I was feeling. Why, I told her that I thought that I’d died and gone right on up to heaven, she were that purty. Hair like gold and fire, and eyes greener than me old Pa’s tales about Ireland! She brought me a whiskey, and I swallowed it down, and I slept like a babe right after that.”
“Whiskey, eh?”
“Whiskey it were.”
Jesse wondered if he’d dare drink anything Kiernan offered him if he were bedridden himself—the whiskey might be laced with rat poison. It surprised him that she had been so decent to this Yank in her house.
But maybe she reserved her real hatred for Yanks like him—Yanks who she felt should be wearing the colors of the Confederacy.
He couldn’t afford to think about it for long. The men Colonel Sebring was sending him to convalesce were arriving, and he had to go over all their files. By nightfall, the large upstairs room was full.
He had yet to see Kiernan again.
Still, he knew that she was about. She visited his patients.
To each and every one of them, she was an angel. She never told them that she was anything but the stoutest of Rebels, but when he slept, she awoke and carried water to his injured crew, whiskey if they needed it. She even wrote a few letters. She might despise Jesse, but just as Tyne was providing him with excellent help in the surgery, Kiernan was proving to be an excellent matron for his ward.
He stayed awake purposely one night to catch her in the act of nursing. He heard her light footsteps hurrying down the hall. He rose and came silently into the hallway in his breeches and bare feet.
He watched her with the men. There were six of them now. She listened to their battle stories, and she retorted to all of them that they should have known that one Rebel was worth ten Yankees. None of the injured seemed to take it ill from her.
She might have called them rats and locusts, and they still wouldn’t have taken it ill, Jesse decided wryly. She was simply too beautiful as she tended to them. Her smile was beautiful, her hair was beautiful, floating about her shoulders. She did look like an angel, for she wore a very proper white flannel nightgown and robe, and both drifted about her with her every movement like the white tunic and wings of the sweetest angel.
He felt his pulse beating in his throat, and he longed with all his heart to leap upon her in the darkness of the hallway, and sweep her away the minute she left the sickroom.
But he did not. He moved against the shadows of the doorway, and he clenched his teeth tightly while he allowed her to pass, unaccosted.
Her scent drifted by him.
Swearing, he returned to his bedroom. He didn’t sleep. The next day, he was exhausted, and he dragged himself through the day, glad that no soldiers in his care were in need of surgery that day.
The next night, he forced himself to sleep. But he thought that he heard her laughter in his dreams, and he damned her in silence for not having run away, far, far away, after he arrived.
Several days after his arrival, his routine began to change.
It was late at night, not late enough for Kiernan to have begun her nocturnal wanderings, but late enough for him to have eaten dinner, made a last round of the patients, and retired to his room. But he wasn’t in bed. Stripped down to a white shirt and his regulation breeches, he was going through the reports he intended to send Colonel Sebring.
His desk faced the windows for the light of the morning and faced away from the door that entered into the room.
He heard the door open and expected it to be Janey. She was careful to keep a certain distance from him, but she was also careful to see to his needs. She cooked him substantial meals daily, and she instructed his men in the use of the laundry for the best output on sheets and bandages. She was remarkable in her management of time and labor, and he realized that it was becoming very easy to depend on her. Despite her avowals that she was only doing her best to keep the house in order for the rightful residents, she often went above and beyond what was necessary for that. At night, when she knew that his cand
le was burning and that he was still working, she often made him coffee.
He didn’t look up when he heard the door close and felt the presence in the room. She didn’t like him to thank her—that made it seem too much as if she had actually done something for him.
“Just put it on the desk, will you, please, Janey?”
A moment later he realized that there was silence and that nothing had come to his desk. He frowned, set down the sheet of paper he was writing on, and turned at last.
Janey was not in the doorway at all. It was the boy, Jacob. Tall, lean, with golden-blond curls and wide dark eyes, he was a younger version of Anthony Miller. Right now, he seemed very much like his brother, for he was holding one of his family’s special pistols, a six-shooter, and it was aimed at Jesse’s heart.
The boy would know how to shoot, Jesse thought. Coming from this family, he would know how to shoot. They were at point-blank range from each other.
Maybe Jacob Miller hadn’t seen enough fighting yet to want to pull the trigger. His fingers were shaking, and it was taking him both hands to hold the pistol. His face, in the soft candlelight of the room, was chalk white.
Jesse leaned back in his chair.
“Do you really want to pull that trigger?” he asked Jacob softly.
The boy was silent for so long that Jesse began to wonder if he had heard him or not.
“I want you out of my house,” Jacob said at last. “Dead is one way to go.”
Jesse lowered his eyes, hiding a smile. Yes, dead was one way to leave. He shouldn’t be smiling. A nervous lad might easily shoot him down, where Indians and Jayhawkers and Rebs had not managed to do so.
And Jacob was deadly serious.
“If you shoot me, you must know that one of my men may get a little crazy and shoot you back, even if you are just twelve.”
“Nearly thirteen.”
“A rotten age to die.”
“You brought a whole passel of Yanks here!” Jacob accused him. “You killed my brother!”
Jesse wondered where Jacob had gotten such information. He realized he was talking in a broad sense, that anyone in blue was responsible for killing Anthony Miller.
“I—I don’t care if I am shot down by a Union company,” he told Jesse. “Just as long as I take one bluebelly with me.”
“Right,” Jesse said. “But what about Patricia? And Kiernan? Once I’m gone, this house is tinderwood.”
Jacob blinked once. “They’ll go east,” he said. “They’ll go to Kiernan’s father.”
It was what he himself wanted, Jesse thought wryly. “Jacob, if you would just—”
“You know Kiernan better than I do,” Jacob said suddenly. “You probably know her better than my brother did.”
“I lived next to her all of my life, Jacob.”
“You wanted my brother dead!” Jacob accused him.
Jesse stood up. The gun in Jacob’s hand waved at him, but he was suddenly too angry to let the boy get away with his words. Reason wasn’t working. “You’re damned wrong, Jacob Miller. I’ve never wanted any man dead.” Hand outstretched, he started across the room. “Now give me that pistol, and go back—”
He broke off, throwing himself down and at Jacob’s legs as, to his amazement, the boy actually fired the gun. A bullet grazed Jesse’s arm, then hit the desk somewhere. Blood suddenly drenched the sleeve of his white shirt, but he knew he was all right. He had Jacob down on the ground beneath him, and the gun was wrenched from his hands.
“What did you want to go do a damned fool thing like that for?” Jesse demanded furiously.
“I didn’t mean to!” Jacob gasped. “Honest to God, I didn’t really mean to!”
The door to the room suddenly burst open. Corporal O’Malley, a fresh-faced Irishman hailing from Manhattan, on night duty with the patients, stood there, his rifle loaded and aimed.
“Captain Cameron—”
“I’m fine, Corporal,” he called over his shoulder.
“But Captain—”
“I said I’m fine. We had a little accident here.”
O’Malley seemed to assess the situation, then grinned and started out of the room. But in his place, another arrival rushed past him in a panic.
Kiernan was dressed in her angel attire, Jesse noted, the chaste white that drifted and wafted around her, that covered her from throat to foot, that made her the most sensual creature he had ever seen.
Angel, indeed. An angel sent from hell to torment his every waking moment and beyond.
But for once, there was nothing in her shimmering green eyes besides fear. Was it fear for his safety? he wondered briefly.
He remembered that he was sitting on top of one of her charges, and that she’d be concerned.
“Jesse, what—oh, my God! Jacob!”
She rushed forward, but Jesse put up a warning hand, his eyes narrowing, and she came to a halt, staring at them both, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“Jesse, don’t hurt him!” she pleaded. “Jesse, please, for the sake of our friendship—”
“‘Jesse’? What the hell happened to ‘Captain Cameron’?” he scolded her. “Friendship? What friendship? I’m a Yank, remember? You’d rather see this house burn to the ground than see me in it, remember? Jacob was only trying to help you, Mrs. Miller.”
Her face was suddenly whiter than the boy’s, if that was possible. Jesse rose to his feet, pulling Jacob up along with him with his good hand. Kiernan issued another gasp. “Your arm! Let him go. Let me see to it—”
“Mrs. Miller, it breaks my heart to turn down an offer of tender ministrations from you, but I believe I’ll do just that. Now, excuse us.”
He had Jacob by the shirt collar and was starting for the door.
“Jesse—”
He stopped, furious with her. “It’s ‘Captain Cameron’ to you, ma’am, and if you will excuse me, the lad and I have a few things to discuss.”
She started almost as if he had slapped her. He ignored her and pulled Jacob along the hallway and to the stairs, then down to the ground floor. He made his way through the cots waiting in the entry hall to the left, to what had been a Miller office but was now his surgery, with big windows that faced the east. He paused to light a lamp. He realized then that Kiernan had followed.
“Jesse—”
“Captain Cameron!”
“Captain Cameron, then!” she snapped, the angel’s sweet tone leaving her voice. He smiled. Even now, pretense was so quickly stripped away with her. “He’s just a boy, he didn’t—”
“He’s a big boy, and he did,” Jesse told her flatly. “Out.” He left Jacob in the center of the room and walked right into Kiernan, forcing her to back up. It was a damned good thing that he had his own anger.
Because it felt good to touch her body, to feel the soft fabric brushing him, to feel the curve of her breasts touching his chest as he forced her back.
“Damn you! I won’t leave him here with you!” she cried, and her fists slammed against his chest.
He plucked her swiftly up and off her feet. For one wild moment, her eyes met his, and he remembered all those other times that he had held her so. Fire raged through his loins and tore into his limbs, and still her eyes met his. He felt a shudder rake through her body, and her lashes lowered.
When her gaze met his again, it was all fury. “Let me down, Yank, let me—”
He did let her down. He deposited her flatly outside the door, slammed it in her face, and locked it.
He turned, hearing her pounding on it and calling his name, then any name that seemed to come to her mind.
He looked at Jacob, who now stood wide-eyed in the center of the room, staring at him.
Jesse smiled. “Well, we’re alone at last.” Feeling a certain sweet satisfaction—even though all the fires of hell were still tormenting him—Jesse strode across the room to the cabinet where he had kept a set of his medical instruments and a supply of bandages. “Here, you can patch this arm up for me
. You did it—you might as well fix it.”
He paused, glancing toward the door. The house was well built. Kiernan was still swearing away and pounding on the wood.
He ignored her.
Jacob stared at him. His eyes strayed toward the door, then met Jesse’s again. Jesse returned the look, as if to assure Jacob that he had no intention of paying heed to Kiernan. “Now, to my wound. You might cause me pain cleaning it out. Think I’ll have a drink. Yes, there’s a whiskey bottle over there. Want a shot?”
“I—er, I’m not old enough,” Jacob told him blankly.
“Sure you are. If you’re old enough to run around pointing pistols at men, you’re old enough to share a small drink.”
Several bottles and glasses stood on a cherrywood table that he had wedged close to the desk to leave as much room as possible in the room. He poured out two shots of whiskey and handed one to Jacob. He swallowed down his own, then studied the boy as he took a sip. Jacob winced, but he didn’t cough, and he swallowed down all of the amber liquid.
“You’ve had whiskey before,” Jesse said.
“Once or twice,” he admitted. “Pa gave me some the day Virginia voted out of the Union.”
“Mm,” Jesse murmured. “Well, let’s see if it’s steadied your hand.”
From a basin he poured out fresh water. He ripped off his shirt sleeve and inspected his wound. “Let’s see. Do we need to sew it up?”
“Sew?” Jacob said, and swallowed hard.
“Sew,” Jesse said. “Maybe just a stitch or two.”
He had been hit in the left arm, and for that he was grateful—he needed his right arm. He easily washed away the blood on the wound, and it probably would have been all right without any stitches. But it seemed like a good time for Jacob to learn something, something that might make all the difference for him in the future.
Jesse went through his bag and produced a needle and sutures. He threaded the needle and brought it over to Jacob. “Here, start right here. Just two of them, small and neat. Don’t worry about tying them off. I’ve got one hand left—I’ll help you.”
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