Triumph

by Heather Graham

  Once he had felt that he couldn’t afford to take time from the battlefield, even when time had been offered to him; the war effort needed him. Now, he needed the time, and the war effort would go on without him.

  As he walked to the pool, he paused for a minute to close his eyes. Home. This was home to him, this warmth. A touch, just a touch, of a winter’s chill in the air. The whisper of a palm, bending in the breeze. The cry of a heron.

  Yes, it was nearly winter, but still the days were warm and beautiful, the sun brilliant. The pines, oaks, and palms offered a gentle relief from the heat of the sun as he headed toward the pool. When he had reached the copse, he saw Tia there. She sat on a log, dangling her bare feet into the cool spring water. She wore a soft blue-flowered cotton gown, with the full length of her hair untied and sweeping around her. She appeared very young, like a little nymph, a water sprite. But when she turned toward him, her dark eyes were far older, and the tension in her beautiful features betrayed the strain she had been under.

  He walked to the log and sat down beside her.

  “So this is the McKenzie reflecting pool,” he said after a moment, aware that she was watching him.

  “It is. It’s my favorite place here,” she said, and he heard her voice tightening. “I love it. I love the birds, and the water—the fresh water, and the river and the sea beyond. I love the heat, and the breezes, and the days and the nights and ... Taylor, thank you. I ...” She turned and looked at him. “Cimarron means a lot to me. But ... but it wasn’t the property that made me do what I did. My father has always taught us that there is no thing, no object in the world that is worth a man’s life. I went to Weir thinking I could stall him. I didn’t have anything planned. I ...”

  She didn’t finish. She looked away.

  “Taylor, why did you send me away?” she asked him.

  His heart shuddered and squeezed. “Because you wanted to go home.”

  “I wanted to be home,” she whispered. “But not away from you.”

  “Every time I made love to you,” he said harshly, “it was as if I forced a burden on you. You told me you didn’t want children.”

  “I was afraid! But I—I was glad that you were impatient with my fears. My God, Taylor! You must have known how I felt!”

  “I know that you cried!”

  “Because ... because I needed you so much, and you ...” Her voice trailed. She stared at him. “Well, when you came to the Ellington place, and then let me ride with you—”

  “I was an idiot! See what happened.”

  She smiled. “I’m all right, and my mother is all right. I had to be here, Taylor. That was fate maybe. But you—you could have stopped me. And I said that I’d do whatever you wished—afterward. And I’ll keep my word to you, Taylor. I’ll go wherever you want—lock myself into prison, if that’s your wish.”

  He stared at her a long time. Then he grimaced in return. “Tempting!” he said softly.

  “You mean ... you ...” She hesitated, looking away again. “Taylor, another man might have cut my throat that night. I assume that, at the very least, you must want a divorce now.”

  “True, another man might have been really tempted to skewer you!” he reflected, picking up and throwing a pebble, then watching it skip across the surface of the water. He turned to her again. “But a wife without a throat does not do a man much good.”

  She looked at him again. “Wife ... but Taylor ...”

  “We both made a commitment, Tia. I said I wouldn’t let you out of it. And I won’t.”

  “And as for prison?” she whispered softly.

  “I think your mother is going to need you here for a while,” he said.

  He felt her eyes, felt the heat and amazement in the way she looked at him. Then, suddenly, he was pitching off the log, totally unprepared as she threw herself at him. “Taylor, oh, my God, Taylor ...”

  He would have to learn never to underestimate her. She straddled him this time, her hair falling all over him, teasing his nose, making him sneeze. Then her lips were on his, sweet with passion, salty with tears. She kissed him, and kissed him, and then he heard her whisper, “Taylor, thank God, thank God. I didn’t want our baby born in a prison.”

  Baby.

  He still had the strength. He rose swiftly, pinning her beneath him. “What?”

  “Sometime in April, I believe,” she said. Then her eyes watered again. “Oh, Taylor, I swear that it’s ours ... yours. I ... love you. I think I started loving you when I met you, you aggravated me so badly, being so damned certain that you were right, being a ...”

  “Yankee?” he supplied.

  “But you just wouldn’t act badly, you were always so ... well, determined, but honorable. Passionate ... but honorable.”

  “You didn’t want children!” he said hoarsely.

  “I was afraid, so afraid!” she whispered. “I’m still afraid. So much bad happens, but then, you should see the new little McKenzies, they’re so wonderful ... so beautiful ... I do want our baby, Taylor. So very much. And I was afraid again, afraid that taking the bullet the way I did might cost us our child, but then again, I couldn’t have watched my mother die ... and I’ve been thinking, Taylor, and I was so wrong, but if I had to go back ... I couldn’t have let my father die either.”

  He smoothed her hair from her face. And he understood, and he should have understood her so long ago. No. He couldn’t have done anything other than fight for the Union. And she never could have allowed either of her parents to be harmed.

  “We just have to be grateful that it’s over; that it ended as it did,” he said softly, brushing her lips with a kiss.

  Her eyes, so huge and dark against her delicate features, locked with his. “Can you really forgive me?”

  “Can you forgive me?” he asked.

  “I never betrayed you!” she whispered.

  “You’re right. I was just a horse’s ass!”

  She smiled slowly. Her arms wrapped around him. She drew his head down to hers. She pressed her lips to his, kissing him, slowly at first, sweetly. Then her lips formed to his, her tongue snaked along his, pressing entry, and her kiss became amazingly provocative. He kissed her back, parting her lips further, penetrating her mouth deeply with his tongue in return. Amazing what a kiss could do. He felt it straight to his groin, felt the hunger, the need, the time between them, the sudden desperation to touch more of her. He found the hem of her gown, slid his hand up the length of her bare legs, heard her soft gasp against his lips as his touch teased along her upper thigh ...

  Then, abruptly, he pulled away from her, aware—too late—that they were not alone.

  Weir hadn’t quite come up to them. He stood five feet away, a pistol in his hand. He had meant to reach them, Taylor realized, and press the gun straight to his temple. His uniform looked torn, ragged, slept in. Weir’s cheeks were dusky with a few days’ growth of beard. His eyes were wild. Red-rimmed, nervous, darting.

  He had escaped, Taylor realized, by diving into the sea. He had come straight to them.

  He had watched and waited until they were alone and absorbed with one another. He had meant to walk right up to the two of them—then pull the trigger. Then, so that Taylor’s blood and bone would shatter over Tia ...

  Taylor leapt to his feet, dragging Tia up with him, pressing her behind him.

  Weir had the advantage. Taylor had come here unarmed.

  “Hello, there—Colonel!” he said contemptuously. “And Miss McKenzie—oh, excuse me, Mrs. Douglas. That’s right, you married him, but came to me. Well, well.”

  “How did you get here, Weir?” Taylor demanded.

  “Oh, Douglas! You do seem to think that you’re the only man who knows the woods, the streams, the oceans ... I grew up here, too, you red bastard. No, I don’t have the savage blood in me that makes a swamp rat, but I sure as hell can escape a knot, dive into the ocean, make the shore—and then find my way back here.”

  “You escaped the ship,” Tia sa
id.

  “My love!” he exclaimed. “Nothing would keep me from you. Having a taste of all that is offered ... well, I simply hunger and pine for more.”

  “Raymond Weir, you meant to kill my father. I loathe and despise you.”

  “And you, Tia, are nothing but a strumpet and a whore,” Weir said. “Don’t fear. I don’t love you anymore, Tia. When I finish with you, there are armies out there who are welcome to you!”

  “Call my wife a whore again, Weir, and I’ll kill you,” Taylor told him. He sounded confident. Fool. What the hell was he going to do? Weir held the cocked gun.

  “Douglas!” Weir said. “By God, but I do despise you. Do you want her to die, too? Get away from her. I won’t kill you, Tia. I’ll just make you wish you were dead. You think you could make a fool out of me? Take down my men, and I would meekly go to prison and forget? Oh, no, my love. You want to be part of this war? You can pay the price of it as well.”

  “This war is lost!” Taylor said. “Give it up, Weir. The South that you knew is dead and gone, never to come again.”

  “Never!” Weir said. “The South is a taste and a feel, and it is honor—”

  “Yes! The South can be a taste and feel of what is beauty and honor and graciousness. But you would take all that from her. You call yourself honorable?” Taylor demanded harshly.

  “You don’t understand. The courage to kill McKenzie when others hadn’t the strength or power to pluck a viper from our nest is honor, sir! Now ... Tia! Ah, Tia! You beautiful, beautiful little whore, come to me.”

  Taylor had only one chance. Maybe a stupid chance. But it was all he had.

  He drew Tia from around him—astounded to hear her cry out and throw a thick handful of dirt into Weir’s eyes. Weir swore, reaching for his eyes.

  Taylor catapulted hard against the man. His flying assault threw them both against the earth.

  They struggled for the gun. He had Weir’s wrist, fighting for control.

  There was a sudden explosion of sound. Raymond Weir went deadly still. Taylor looked into the man’s eyes as they glazed over.

  The gun had gone off. The bullet had barely missed Taylor. It had lodged deep inside Weir’s head, taking Weir just as he had intended to take Taylor.

  “Taylor!”

  Tia screamed his name. She was at his side, and in his arms. He cradled her to him, and held her, and held her, and held her ...

  It was some time later before they could get up and go back to the house, and have someone else go to the pool for Weir’s body. It would be some time, Taylor thought, before he would enjoy the pool again.

  But not before he would love his wife.

  The war had taught him the lesson that life was precious.

  He had never learned it so thoroughly as that day.

  That night, she touched him with a tenderness greater than any he had ever known. He made love to her with an equal, heartfelt fervor, passionate, forceful, and humbled.

  For all the time that they could be together, he held her. Each night he made love to her.

  Every moment, he thanked God for her.

  Someday, they would have a real future, but ...

  Time, like life, was precious. It slipped away far too quickly.

  They both knew it. They cherished the moments they shared. They touched, they talked earnestly, they were passionate, they were tender ...

  It wasn’t over.

  Soon, he would have to leave.

  There was one more skirmish in Florida, occurring in January of 1865. The Florida troops were victorious. Julian wrote Taylor that there had been little of a victory celebration then. The war was lost. To many, many men, it was far too obvious. Many wished they could walk away. Some deserted. Others could not walk away. They had to see it through to the bitter end.

  Lincoln’s speech at his second inauguration spoke well of the man. He wanted peace, not punishment. He wanted to welcome the South back to the Union. “With malice toward none, and justice for all,” he said in his heartfelt, country manner of eloquence.

  Grant was finally the man to win the war. He hammered at Petersburg, never giving up until the desperate city was forced to surrender.

  The way to Richmond was open. The Southern capital was abandoned. The government ran.

  Taylor was at Appomattox Courthouse the day Lee surrendered. He was able to salute his weary old friend as he gave up the battle, and the death. All around him, North and South, soldiers hailed him as one of the greatest generals ever to rise in America. America. They had been North and South. And now, again, they were Americans.

  On the day that it ended, Taylor, Jesse, and Ian were able to meet up. In the next few days, they were able to find Brent and Mary. It was another few days before they were able to receive leave together and ride home.

  At that moment, home meant Cimarron. To all of them. Sydney had gone there soon after Christmas, knowing that she had done all she could for the Underground Railroad, and that her mother and father would be there.

  James and his extended family had traveled north after the events at Cimarron. It had seemed a time to be with family.

  It was nearly the middle of April when they heard the news that Lincoln had been assassinated. It was a bitter blow. President Johnson might be a good man who would try, but the Congress would stand up against him. They would enter into a bitter struggle. Taylor was bitter himself, but not surprised; President Lincoln had seen his own death coming. He was legend now, a man greater than he had ever imagined himself to be.

  A few days later, their long journey home was almost over. They had tried to find Julian in north Florida, since the last of the Florida troops had yet to surrender.

  They learned he was at Cimarron.

  When they arrived at the property, Julian was waiting in the parlor, having heard they were coming. “I have something for you,” he told Taylor.

  And the bundle Julian carried was suddenly in Taylor’s arms.

  “A daughter. If she’s anything like her mother, you’re in serious trouble. She was born the day we heard about the surrender. Tia named her Hope.”

  He held his child, shaking. He found the strength to hold her more tightly, afraid that he would drop her. She had a head of dark, curly hair already, and huge, huge dark but multicolored eyes with just a touch of gold.

  Taylor cradled his child to his heart, and took the stairs two at a time.

  In his wife’s room, he fell to his knees at the bedside, and Tia touched his hair, threading her fingers through it, drawing his head to hers. She kissed him with tears, with love, with tenderness, with passion ...

  And at last, with all the promise of a real future stretching before them ...

  The land was torn. Beaten, scarred.

  But peace had been declared.

  And the healing could come at last.

  “Hope?” Tia questioned softly.

  “Hope,” he agreed. And kissed his wife again.

  Epilogue

  September, 1876

  Cimarron

  JARRETT MCKENZIE STOOD IN the graveyard, one booted foot upon an old, weather-worn border stone. The sudden sound of a screech made him wince, but he smiled and shook his head as he did so. There had been a lot of screeches thus far—and there would be many more to follow. Tara had warned him it would be so when he had determined to invite the entire family for a post-Centennial Fourth of July celebration. That’s what happened when you had that many children about. Lord, how many of them were there now? They seemed to be all over the place, a new race of being, totally populating the lawn.

  “Father!”

  It was Tia coming toward him. Still delicate and tiny, despite the five little Douglases she and Taylor had contributed to the family tree.

  All these years gone by ... and he still felt a special warmth in his heart when he saw his daughter. A daughter was definitely a man’s jewel, so he had determined with his son-in-law at the birth of Jessica Lyn—a girl after four boys. He adored his so
ns, he always would; he respected them now as men. But his daughter....

  She was flushed, a bit breathless. He had watched her running with the younger children below on the lawn. She was delighted to be back, and with the children, having just returned from a long-planned trip to Egypt with Taylor. They had come home by way of New York and stopped at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia on their way home.

  Tia’s excitement over the exposition was encouraging. War wounds were beginning to heal. More than a decade after the conflict, there were still huge slashes and scars from the bitter divide to mar the country. But most men wanted to look to the future—and peace.

  “Father! Why are you standing up here in the cemetery? Mother wants to have birthday cake for the children.”

  “Which children?” he teased.

  “The September children,” she said with a laugh. Her dark eyes flashed with humor. She lifted on her toes, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. He slipped an arm around her. They looked down on the lawn together.

  Young Anthony Malloy, the oldest of all the McKenzie third generation, was nineteen, and had just returned from classes in Tallahassee. Like his cousin Taylor Douglas, he wanted to be an architect, and he was seated at one of the picnic tables now with Taylor, who was making a point, building with the picnic ware.

  Taylor had come home from the war to build many of the houses he had dreamed of creating. He claimed that his wife still loved her family home, Cimarron, above any mansion he had ever tried to build for her—and his brood.

  Anthony seemed oblivious to the nearby teasing of his half-siblings, twins Ana and Ashley Long. Good-naturedly, he ruffled the girls’ hair as he listened to Taylor. Young master Sean McKenzie was not being so tolerant—when his sisters Ariana and Kelly sprayed him with water from the gardening hose, he turned on them with what might have been a vengeance, but helped by cousins Conar, Allen, and Tia’s oldest boy, Robert, they turned the tables on the girls, and the laughter and shrieking rose again, especially after they showered Risa, who was walking across the lawn with fresh lemonade.

  Jerome had gone back into shipbuilding, he and Risa owned a marina—and even allowed Yankee tourists down to stay at one of the houses they kept on the beach. Ian had gone into politics, determined to see the state completely repatriated with all due dignity.