“It would be … rape!” She spit the words out.
“I doubt it.”
“Oh, you flatter yourself!”
“I’ve waited long and cold and furious nights, Callie. I will have you.”
“You won’t!” she cried to him. “You won’t hurt me. You won’t force me. You won’t because you promised! You won’t because of who you are. I know it. I know you—”
“Damn you, Callie! You don’t know me. You never knew me!”
But she did. She knew the sound of his voice, and she knew the twist of his jaw. She knew the way he stood, and she even knew the way he thought. She knew the searing blue light in his eyes, and she knew both the tempest and the tenderness that could rule the man.
And she knew the raw passion that guided him now.
His mouth descended upon hers. His lips were hard and forceful. She could not twist or turn to avoid or deter him, for his fingers threaded through her hair, holding her head still to his assault. She clamped down to fight him in any way that she could. She hammered her fists against his back; but he ignored her blows, and eventually she stopped. He robbed her of breath, and of reason and of her fury. Her defenses were weak, and her enemy in gray was powerful. Even more powerful was all the time and loneliness and even love that had passed between them. There was more than determination in his kiss. Perhaps there was even more than passion.
Her lips parted to his as the thrust of his tongue demanded. Searing hot, liquid, demanding, seductive, he played upon her senses, tasted her mouth, the deep recesses, the curve of her lip. Touched and demanded that she give in turn, and seemed to reach within her, more and more deeply and fiercely.
Her fingers ceased to press against him. She no longer tried to push away. She hadn’t the power.
“Callie!”
She heard the whisper of his voice, fierce, passionate, spoken with anger, and spoken with anguish.
“Damn, I’ll not let you sway me!” he cried out furiously. His eyes were fire as they touched hers. His fingers bit brutally into her arms.
At that moment she did not know him. She didn’t know if he would have her in anger and hatred or if he would cry out an oath and jump from her side. Suddenly, it didn’t matter.
A loud, fierce cry filled the room. It wasn’t a Rebel yell, nor was it any Yankee call.
It was a high, trembling, furious, and extremely demanding cry. As it was ignored, it grew to new, hysterical heights.
The sound of that cry stopped Daniel flat, stopped him as Callie could have never done herself.
He sat back upon his haunches; his eyes narrowed sharply upon her. “What in God’s name?”
Her breath caught. She strove for calm. She shimmied from beneath him, and he made no effort to stop her. “It’s—it’s Jared,” she said.
He stared at her blankly, like a man trying to understand code when the code was plain English.
“That’s a baby,” he said.
“Yes, it’s a baby!” she replied. She managed to leap from the bed at last. She hurried down the hall to the nursery and threw open the door.
Jared had kicked off his coverings. His hands and feet were flying furiously. His little mouth was open wide, and he was screaming with a demanding will.
Callie swept him up quickly into her arms.
Daniel stood in the doorway, having come behind her. He stared at her with amazement etched across his features. She realized that he wasn’t looking at her at all. He was looking at Jared.
“It is a baby,” he said.
He strode across the room.
Instinctively Callie held the child close to her breast. Daniel ignored her protective hold and reached for Jared with a dogged determination. “Give him to me, Callie,” Daniel said.
Lest she hurt Jared, she had to let him go. Daniel meant to see him, and see him he would.
Daniel, ignoring Jared’s squalling and the flailing of his tiny fists and feet, walked over to the flickering lamplight that filtered in from the hallway. Callie swallowed hard, feeling shaky as she watched him scrutinize the baby clad in his white cotton shirt and diaper. He stared from Jared’s furiously puckered face to his perfect little feet. Daniel held the infant well, his hand and arm secure beneath Jared as he touched the long, wild tuft of ebony dark hair upon Jared’s head. Then Daniel’s eyes—those distinct blue eyes, mirrored in the tiny face of the child—fell upon her again.
“It’s my baby!” he exclaimed harshly.
She wanted to speak, but her mouth had gone dry.
He turned and started out the doorway.
With her baby. His baby. Their baby.
He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—be leaving with Jared, she thought. Jared was just an infant. Daniel couldn’t begin to care for him. Even he wouldn’t be so cruel.
But his footsteps were retreating down the stairway.
“Daniel!” She found her voice and a frantic energy at last. She raced after him, and this time it was she who accosted him at the foot of the stairs. “What are you doing? Give him to me! Daniel, he’s crying because he’s hungry. You can’t take him from me! Daniel, please! What do you think you’re doing?”
Daniel stood stone still, staring at her. “He is my son.”
At that moment she panicked and, frightened of his behavior, made a serious mistake. “You can’t begin to know that—”
“The hell I can’t. And what a fool you are to try to deny it,” he said softly and coldly.
“Daniel, give him back!”
“He doesn’t belong here. He belongs at Cameron Hall,” Daniel said stubbornly.
Callie’s mouth dropped. “You can’t take him! He’s barely two months old. You can’t care for him. Daniel, please!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She caught hold of his elbow and held on. “Daniel, he needs me. He’s crying because he’s hungry. You have to give him back to me.”
A slow smile curved into his mouth despite the baby’s hungry screaming. “You didn’t even intend to tell me about him, did you, Callie?”
She nodded her head, the liquid brimming in her eyes. “Yes, I intended to tell you!”
“When the hell did you intend to tell me?” he bellowed.
“You didn’t give me a chance. You came in here condemning me—”
“You knew that I’d come back. Maybe you didn’t.” He corrected himself bitterly. “Maybe you thought that I’d rot and die in that camp!”
“Damn you, Daniel, you can’t kidnap my son!”
“My son. And he’ll have my name,” Daniel said. To her amazement he walked past her.
“You can’t care for him!” she cried out. Of all the things that he might have done to her, she had never imagined this.
She had never in a thousand years imagined the fear she would feel, or the desperation, or the anguish.
He stopped and turned back with a smile. “Oh, but I can, Callie. I can. I can find a mammy to care for him within the hour. Believe me, Callie.”
“You wouldn’t!” she breathed.
“He’s a Cameron, Callie, and he’s going south tonight.”
“You can’t take him away from me! He’s mine!”
“And mine. Created under very bitter circumstances. He’s coming home, Callie, and that’s that.”
“This is his home!”
“No, his home is south, upon the James.”
No matter what had passed between them, no matter how bitterly he could have learned to hate her in the months that lay between them, she still could not believe it when he stepped past her.
“I’ll call the law!” she cried out.
“There is no law anymore, Callie,” he said to her wearily, over his shoulder. “Just war.”
She followed him to the door. Jared was crying with an ever-greater shrillness, furious that his meal was being denied him. The tears she had tried to hold back burst from Callie’s eyes and streamed down her face. “No! You cannot take him from me!” she thundered, and she slammed against him, beating her fists ag
ainst his back.
He spun on her, his blue eyes fierce and ruthlessly cold.
“Then you’d best be prepared to travel south, too, Callie. Because that’s where he is going!”
She stepped back, stunned once again. “What?”
“My son is going south. If you want to be with him, you can prepare to ride with me. I’ll give you ten minutes to decide. Then we’re moving. Meade just may decide to chase Lee’s army this time, though it seems poor Uncle Abe just can’t find himself a general to come after Lee. But I’m not waiting. So if you’re coming, be ready.”
South!
She couldn’t travel to Virginia. Her heart had been set long ago, at the beginning of the war.
She couldn’t travel to the South because she was against slavery, but more than that, because she had understood President Lincoln’s war from the beginning. The first shots hadn’t been fired because of emancipation. The war had begun because the southern states had believed that they could secede, that states’ rights were supreme. Now the war involved so much more.
She couldn’t go to Virginia because of Daniel Cameron. Because he was convinced she had betrayed him. Because he was determined to be her enemy with a far greater hostility than any northern general had ever felt for Bobby Lee.
She reached out her arms to him. “Daniel, give me the baby. Just let me feed him.” He stared at her in an icy silence. She gritted her teeth. “Please!”
His frigid blue stare still pierced her condemningly, but he brought the baby to her. Jared was suddenly in her arms, warm, trembling, precious, still screaming. Callie shook, knowing that the baby meant more to her than anything in the world.
More than war. Far more than pride or glory.
“Ten minutes, Callie,” Daniel said. “I’ll be waiting on this step. For Jared. And you. If you choose. But Jared is coming with me.”
“But we’re enemies!”
“Bitter enemies,” he said politely.
“I could betray you again, moving through this territory.”
“You’ll never have the chance again,” he said softly.
Yes, she thought fleetingly, she knew him. And she knew that he meant what he was saying.
He would take the baby.
She met his startling blue gaze and then turned and fled up the steps with Jared. She ran into her room, her heart beating. She kissed her son’s forehead and distractedly pulled upon the strings of her bodice, freeing her breast for the baby to nurse. She touched his cheek with her knuckles, and he rooted for a moment before latching on to her to suckle strongly.
Love, enormous waves of it, came rushing through her. She rested her cheek upon her baby’s head. She would never let Daniel take him from her.
No matter what had been. No matter how bitter Daniel might be.
No matter what it was she had to face as a Yank in the South.
She closed her eyes. Daniel was so wrong. Their son had been conceived in love.
Not even a year had passed since then. Not even a year since she had first seen Daniel Cameron.
She closed her eyes and remembered.…
Heather Graham lives in Florida with her husband and five children. Formerly a professional model, she has written thirteen bestselling historical romances, including the New York Times bestseller And One Rode West.
Published by
Dell Publishing
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Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
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New York, New York 10103
Copyright © 1991 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
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