Lily and the Major

by Linda Lael Miller

  She lay still, watching him move in the shadows. He was a magnificent man. “But not for you?”

  He turned and looked at her, and she could feel the heat of his amber eyes in the darkness. He shook his head in a movement so slight that it was almost imperceptible. “I won’t be giving up anything. But you will.”

  Lily knew he was right, knew she should put on her clothes and leave before any damage was done, but she was possessed of a strange, sweet inertia. She bit down on her lower lip and waited for him to put out the mysterious fire within her.

  He poised himself over her, lean and agile as a prowling jungle beast. His long frame trembled with his effort at restraint. “Lily, are you sure—?”

  She nodded her head slowly and ran her hands along the sides of his rib cage. “You’ll be the first, Caleb,” she told him. However unnecessary the words might have been, they were important to Lily.

  He sighed. “It hurts the first time,” he warned.

  Lily laid her hands to his taut buttocks and pressed him toward her. “I don’t care, Caleb. You said you’d show me how to be a woman—now you ave to keep your word.”

  Caleb reached down to prepare her with his fingers, caressing and then claiming her with a sudden thrust of his hand. Her back arched as the heat began thrumming through her again, and Caleb withdrew his fingers only to replace them with the tip of his shaft.

  Lily’s hands were moving up and down his back now, gently urging him. “Take me, Caleb.”

  He pressed just a little further into her, and Lily began to whimper, needing something she couldn’t begin to define. He dropped his mouth to hers and whispered against her lips, “Only once. It will only hurt once, Lily.”

  She trusted him utterly and drew him into her kiss. He caught her cry of mingled pain and pleasure when his manhood was driven home in a single powerful stroke.

  There was a stinging sensation, a feeling of being too full, but this was soon replaced by something more elemental. Lily’s body craved friction, and her hips began rising and falling by instinct.

  Caleb went rigid upon her and moaned, “Lily, stop—please stop—”

  His pleading only heightened her pleasure, and she had to have the sweet conflict he would have denied her. She flung herself at him, a she-cat claiming her mate, and his control was shattered. He rode her with a smooth, rhythmic ferocity that made the flesh of his back slick beneath Lily’s hands.

  Lily felt wonder, as well as an explosion of delight, when his powerful body buckled upon hers. After a long moment he collapsed, nearly crushing her beneath his weight. Gasping for breath, he shifted her so that she lay on top of him.

  “I didn’t plan that,” he managed, just as the full measure of what she’d done was beginning to dawn on Lily.

  She flung herself away, eyes burning with tears, and groped in the darkness for her drawers and petticoat. “You knew exactly what you were doing!”

  Caleb rose from the sofa and began putting on his clothes. “Lily, I only meant to show you what I could make you feel. I wanted to stop when you were satisfied, but you wouldn’t let me.”

  The fact that what he said was true only shamed Lily further. What had possessed her to do such a stupid, brazen thing, she wondered frantically as she yanked on her drawers and tied the strings firmly. One minute she’d been dancing, the next she’d been thrashing beneath Caleb Halliday like a wanton.

  She gave a strangled cry of frustrated rage and struggled when she felt Caleb’s hands close on her shoulders. She’d never meant for this to happen; it was as though someone else had taken over her body.

  “It’s all right, Lily,” he said gently, and she sank against him, sobbing.

  He held her until she’d stopped crying, and he brought her her petticoat and dress. He waited while she dressed, then lit the lamp again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, buttoning his paneled shirt.

  Lily made a largely useless effort to right her hair and glared at him. “Take me home!”

  Caleb sighd, gestured toward the door with a sweeping motion of one hand, and turned down the wick in the lamp again.

  Lily was through the door and outside in the crisp evening air before he caught up to her.

  “I said I was sorry,” he hissed, grasping her by the elbow when she would have kept walking.

  Lily sniffled furiously. “Wonderful!” she whispered. “You ruin a girl’s whole life, then you tell her you’re sorry! Damn you and your arrogant assumptions, Caleb Halliday!”

  He hauled her against his chest, and his eyes glittered in the light of the moon. Music sailed out into the night from the mess hall.

  “Stop acting like this was all my idea,” Caleb ordered furiously. “The truth is, most of it was yours, and you damned well know it!”

  “Mine?!” Lily cried. “I wasn’t the one who took my clothes off!”

  Caleb’s nose was not more than half an inch from Lily’s. “Maybe not,” he countered, “but you sure as hell helped take mine off!”

  Lily was mortified, and she glanced wildly around her to see if anyone had overheard Caleb’s accusation. “I got carried away!” she whispered.

  Caleb sighed. “We both did,” he admitted. “Come on, I’ll take you back to the Tibbets’.”

  Lily was a little calmer, but she bridled all the same. “1 can take myself back, thank you.”

  Caleb cursed under his breath and propelled her toward one of the buggies that lined the street in front of the mess hall. Before she could escape him he’d thrust her up into the seat.

  She folded her arms across her chest and looked straight ahead. “Just suppose I do get married someday. What am I going to tell my husband on our wedding night?”

  Caleb’s shoulders moved in an insolent shrug. “I guess you’ll just have to pretend, won’t you?”

  The darkness hid the blush that flooded her face—at least, Lily hoped it did. “After tonight, Caleb Halliday, I never want to have anything to do with you. I don’t want to see your face or hear your name!”

  Caleb released the brake lever and brought the reins down on the horse’s back with a snap, but he didn’t speak until they’d pulled up in front of the Tibbets’ house. “I’ll be here to get you at eight tomorrow morning,” he said. “Be ready.”

  Lily wanted to slap him, but she didn’t quite have the nerve. “If it’s all the same to you, Major, I’ll just wait until Monday and take the stagecoach back to Tylerville. Even with renegade Indians and outlaws around, it’s bound to be safer!”

  Caleb glowered at her for a moment, but then he started to laugh.

  Lily elbowed him hard in the ribs, furious that he could find anything funny about the situation. “Stop it!” she cried, starting to clamber down from the buggy.

  “You know,” Caleb said evenly, “it’s likely to take me a good month to train you.”

  Lily struggled against a volcanic burst of temper. “Train me?” she echoed in outraged disbelief.

  Caleb nodded. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Lily-flower. We’ll start with the respect a woman has for her man and progress to public deportment.”

  By then Lily was so angry that she couldn’t speak, only sputter. But when Caleb came around to lift her down from the buggy seat she lost her composure completely and began to pound at his impervious shoulders with her fists.

  Caleb set her away from him easily, and she clenched her hands at her sides.

  “I hate you, Caleb Halliday,” she vowed.

  He kissed her lightly, and she caught the spicy female scent of her own body. “Of course you do, darling,” he said, propelling her toward the Tibbets’ front gate.

  “And what happened tonight is never going to happen again!”

  “Wrong,” Caleb said confidently. “It’s going to happen thousands of times, in thousands of different places.”

  Before Lily could come up with a suitably scathing answer the door opened, and Mrs. Tibbet came out on the porch. “Caleb? Lily? Is the dance over already?”


  Caleb was solicitous as he ushered Lily up the stone walk. “Lily has a slight headache,” he said sympathetically, “but I’m sure she’ll be fully recovered by eight o’clock tomorrow morning when I stop by to pick her up.”

  Lily couldn’t bring herself to make a scene in front of Mrs. Tibbet, not when the woman had gone to so much trouble to make her stay at Fort Deveraux pleasant and comfortable. She managed a hateful smile for Caleb and said, “Good night and thank you for a truly remarkable evening.”

  His lips curved into a secretive grin. “Until tomorrow,” he said, with a little bow.

  Lily wanted to clout him over the head, but she overcame that desire and followed Mrs. Tibbet into the house.

  “I’ll get you some powders for that headache,” the older woman fretted. Lily finally noticed that her hostess was wearing a wrapper, slippers, and a nightcap.

  She shook her head. “Please don’t trouble yourself. I’m sure a little sleep is all I need.”

  Mrs. Tibbet looked at her in an assessing fashion. “Well, if you’re sure. How was the dance, dear?”

  Lily was too fond of Mrs. Tibbet, and too ashamed of her own actions, to tell the entire truth. “I had a marvelous time,” she said, for the dancing had indeed been wonderful. Then I gave myself to Caleb, added a voice in her mind.

  Later, alone in her room, Lily allowed herself to rmember how it had been with Caleb. Despite the initial pain, loving and being loved by that man had been the most glorious experience of her life. Her cheeks warmed at the memory, and she busied herself with her ablutions. There was a faint soreness in her thighs and her most private place that reminded her of those incredible minutes when Caleb’s body had been joined to hers, and although she knew she’d made a serious mistake, she was no longer ashamed.

  There had been something indescribably right about what they’d done together. She just couldn’t let it happen again, that was all.

  Lily stripped off the beautiful lavender dress and laid tentative hands to her breasts. They’d been nothing more than a bother to her until Caleb had touched them, brought them a life they’d never had before.

  Quickly Lily drew her hands away and put on her nightgown. It was wrong to touch herself; Mrs. Sommers, Rupert’s mother, had claimed a person could go to hell for it. Being a preacher’s wife, Bethesda Sommers had been in a position to know those things.

  After polishing her teeth and brushing her hair Lily tossed back the pretty quilt and crawled between smooth linen sheets. Emma, she thought, as she did every night, Caroline, I’m doing my best to stand still so you can find me.

  Imagining what her sisters would look like after all these years was a bittersweet game that Lily played. It made her feel closer to them, but it also invariably caused her to wonder if they’d changed so much she wouldn’t recognize them even if she passed them on the street.

  Lily felt tears gathering and blinked them back, hearing Caroline’s childlike voice as clear as a bell in her mind: “Don’t be a crybaby, Lily-dilly. Nobody likes a crybaby.”

  She ran her hands down over her nightgown, over her hips and her thighs. Her body was sore, but so was her pride. Dear heaven, when she thought of the way she’d responded to Caleb …

  The bed seemed broad and lonely, and she pretended that Caleb was lying beside her, naked and strong. He’d told her that the loving would never hurt after the first time.

  A bleak feeling filled her. There was never going to be a second time, so it didn’t really matter.

  Lily knotted one hand into a fist and bunched the heel of her palm against her mouth. Caleb would come for her in the morning, to drive her back to Tylerville in his buggy. How in the name of heaven was she going to face him?

  She turned onto her side and closed her eyes, determined to sleep. Soon, because she was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, she drifted off.

  She dreamed about the soldier.

  He’d struck Mama—beautiful Mama, with her dark hair and bright brown eyes—with the back of his hand.

  Suddenly, in that strange way of dreams, Lily was grown up, and she had Rupert’s hunting rifle in her hands. She pulled the trigger, and there was a loud report; then Mama’s soldier clutched his belly, blood bubbling past his fingers, and toppled to the floor.

  “Lily,” he said, and he had golden eyes now, and maple-sugar hair. He was Caleb, and he was dying.

  Lily awakened sitting bolt upright in bed, her cry of terror still echoing in the room.

  Chapter

  7

  Galeb sat at the writing table in his room off the main barracks, rubbing one thumb idly over the frame of an old photograph. He felt the pull of the past and resisted it by remembering Lily’s ire after the episode in his office.

  He grinned. He’d boasted that taming her would take a month, but he suspected the job might require a lifetime instead.

  His gaze shifted to the serious, beloved faces in the photograph. His mother stood behind his father’s chair, one hand resting on her husband’s shoulder, and Joss, a handsome five-year-old, stood staunchly at her side.

  Memories pulled Caleb inexorably backward in time.

  Caleb would be thirty-three years old on his next birthday. At sixteen he’d run away to join the Federal Army, and he’d been a cavalryman ever since. He remembered himself as a skinny private, all eyes and Adam’s apple, hardly knowing one end of a rifle from the other, yet confident of his ability to single-handedly save the Union.

  He’d learned fast that war was no schoolyard game, and many a night he’d lain shivering in his bedroll, wishing to God he could go home. He’d wondered, too, whether Joss, his older brother, was lying on another patch of ground somewhere, wanting the same thing.

  Finally Caleb’s mind settled on the day his relationship with his elder brother had changed forever….

  “You can’t do this!” Susannah, Joss’s pretty new bride, sobbed, clutching at the front of her husband’s shirt. “We need you, Caleb and Abbie and I! I won’t let you go!”

  Caleb had watched in disbelief as his brother gently removed Susannah’s hands and bent to kiss the part in her thick auburn hair. “I can’t just stand by and watch this happen,” he said gruffly.

  “It isn’t your fight,” Susannah pressed frantically. “This is Pennsylvania—we’re a part of the North—”

  Joss’s eyes moved to Caleb’s rigid face. They had cousins down in Virginia, and Joss was siding with them and with the South. “Right is right,” he said. “A man should be able to choose how he wants to live without interference from the government.”

  At last Caleb spoke, and his words echoed through the spacious study, even though he said them quietly. Later the unwitting precognition of those simple sentences would haunt him. “If you fight, Joss, it’ll be against your friends and family. It’ll be against me.”

  Joss released his hold on the shoulders of his weeping wife, his face taut with emotion. “You’re sixteen years old,” he said, his voice gruff. “You’ve got no business fighting a war—not on either side.”

  “I’ll be fighting this one,” Caleb maintained quietly. “I’m signing on with the Federal Army.”

  Joss gripped Caleb by the lapels of his shirt, nearly wrenching him off his feet. “You will stay right here,” he said through his teeth.

  Caleb swallowed hard. Joss was bigger and stronger, and he’d been running the Halliday family for five years. But he wasn’t the only one with principles and political beliefs. “I’m going to fight,” Caleb said.

  Joss raised his hand as if to backhand Caleb, but in the end a look of pure sadness filled his eyes. He thrust Caleb away and stormed out of the house without looking back.

  Late that night Caleb packed his saddle bags with food—he was perennially hungry—and rode out.

  Months passed before he and Joss met again.

  Grieved to the depths of his spirit, Caleb avoided thinking about the tragic reunion and turned his mind to another part of the war.

/>   He’d been wounded at Gettysburg, not in the body, but in the soul. Every rebel he’d shot or bayoneted had had Joss’s face, and those first three days of July, 1863, had left Caleb numb inside. Later he’d witnessed Lee’s gallant surrender at Appomattox.

  Soldiering was a lonely life, often a frustrating one. There were times when Caleb thought he’d go insane if he had to put another platoon of privates through their paces on the parade grounds.

  But now there was Lily, and she’d changed everything.

  As soon as he’d brought her around to his way of thinking and she was safely ensconced in a proper house, Caleb decided, he would go back to Pennsylvania and make an attempt at setting things right.

  Maybe he would even leave the army and take his proper place in the world.

  Lily was up and dressed long before eight o’clock the next morning. In fact, by the time breakfast was served she had already located the schoolhouse and peered through the windows of the tiny cottage across the street.

  “I’d like to rent that small house Lieutenant Costner mentioned at supper last night,” she announced as she speared a sausage and passed the platter on to Colonel Tibbet.

  Her host exchanged a level look with his wife. “To start your laundry business, I presume.”

  Lily nodded.

  “My dear,” Mrs. Tibbet said quickly, “if it’s work you want, I can provide it. I’m desperate for a housekeeper—”

  Lily interrupted her hostess with a smile. “You are so kind,” she said sincerely, “and I’ve come to depend upon you as a friend. It wouldn’t be fair for me to accept the position when I intend to quit the moment I have money enough to move onto my homestead.”

  Mrs. Tibbet sighed. “I do understand, dear,” she said gently, and her gaze shifted to the colonel. “John, that house is a waste, sitting empty like that.”

  The colonel’s face grew even more ruddy than usual. “Don’t tell me you’re in favor of this young woman’s preposterous plan, Gertrude!”