How easily she was seduced, she was to marvel later. Yet as his strong, demanding hands expertly removed her clothing, his demandingly provocative kisses stripped her of thought and reason. Her flesh tingled against his, the pleasure of feeling his nakedness against her was intoxicating. And her heart told her that he had come to her . . . and that in so doing he had offered his apology. She was more than ready to forgive him and welcome his touch . . . the flame of love. When he brought himself inside her she felt as if she had become liquid heat, so much a part of him that he could mold her pliant form at will, pull the strings of her limbs and heart as if he were a master puppeteer. He whispered commands, and she obeyed, turning, twisting, arching, embracing, totally submissive and eager to meet his demands. He brought her to a pinnacle of pleasure, withdrew, and showered her with kisses, turning her at his whim, sending her into a sighing delirium as his moist lips trailed along her spine and the small of her back to her buttocks. And then he was a part of her again, sweeping her once more into heated fever, and then to the sweet, explosive crest of passion.
She lay beside him, pulling her gown about her as a cover as she became aware of the cold that his touch had dispelled. “Brent,” she murmured lazily, nuzzling her cheek against his chest and entwining her fingers in the rough, damp mat of hair, “I’m so glad that you see now I was right. I hated being—”
“What?” he interrupted sharply. She lifted her head to stare at him, her eyes brilliant blue in her trusting innocence. “I accept your apology—”
“What apology?” he exploded, smoke-gray eyes narrowing sharply. “I’d still be glad to take a switch to you—”
“What?” She interrupted this time, her voice sharp.
“You might have killed us all. You did act like a fool, and every time I think about it I feel my blood start to boil. Don’t bring it up again.”
“Don’t bring it up! Why you insolent son of a bitch! What possessed you to make love to such a fool!”
Kendall watched the smoke-gray of his eyes become hard and cold as his tawny lashes half closed over them. She could see a tick of anger in his cheek beneath the thick golden growth of his beard.
“Certain needs,” he grated “have little to do with a woman’s idiot mind.”
Kendall braced herself, stiffening as new fury surged through her. She cou1dn’t control her explosive temper, and her teeth clamped hard together as she instinctively attempted to strike him. He caught her wrists, but not quickly enough to keep her nails from raking his cheek.
She found herself jerked fully on top of him, staring into his eyes. “Kendall,” he hissed softly, warningly, “don’t go into battle without any weapons. Don’t ever give what you’re not willing to get.”
“Captain McClain,” she said struggling against his hold, “I’ve decided I agree with you. I have been a complete idiot—where you’re concerned. I’m not some food that exists to appease your hunger. I’m afraid my idiot mind really is a part of my female body.”
“Kendall, you’re a sensual woman. I can’t believe that our basic dispute made our being together any less pleasurable for you.”
“Fine! Brent, you’re absolutely right. Making love is just like eating, right? No matter what is happening, we all crave food and water. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. I was a fool. I loved you. But if I’m sensual—if I have needs—then I’m the one with a choice. There are three other male bodies out there.”
“Stop talking like a whore!”
“And Beau is far more pleasant to be around. Why should I—”
His fingers jerked painfully into her hair. “What is it now, Kendall? The war isn’t enough for you? Are you so anxious to see Beau and me at each other’s throats?”
Kendall shook her head and closed her eyes. “No,” she whispered.
He released her hair and embraced her with a trembling tenderness. “I’m sorry, Kendall. I didn’t mean what I said. It hurt when you called me a son of a bitch, and I retaliated.”
She wanted to cry. It was so good to feel his tenderness, to reach his soul. To hear his whispered words . . .
“If you would just learn to stay out of things that don’t concern you,” he murmured absently. “When you don’t know what you’re doing, Kendall, you do behave foolishly.”
Kendall pulled away from him, hardening in her resolve. “Brent,” she said coolly, “I am concerned with everything that happens to us, and I did not act foolishly. I never have. Many things I’ve done have had dire consequences—and yes, I’ve needed help many times. But I couldn’t have changed any of them. If you can’t accept that—”
He bolted into a sitting position, gripping her shoulders and halting her, his eyes smoldering intensely. “What I can accept, Kendall, is you trusting me once in a while. I don’t want to argue with you. I grant that you are quick and bright—and certainly courageous. But, Kendall, you cannot change the course of the war. That old woman murdered five men. If ever there was a candidate for hanging, it was Hannah Hunt. Your allowing her to escape might have gotten us all captured. I would have probably been hanged or shot, and you would have been returned to John Moore. Now I’m telling you, madam, as soon as I’m able, I’m going to pack you off to safety. And if you budge from where I send you, I’ll find you—come war, or doomsday. I hope you understand me, Kendall.”
“Wait a minute!” Kendall protested angrily. “That isn’t fair, and you must surely know it! You walked out on me. That’s why I went to Vicksburg.”
“I didn’t exactly walk out on you. I am bound to fight this war. You are not.”
“No more. You were a prisoner—”
“Kendall, I have to take command of my ship again. Stirling will have to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia. And Beau and Jo will have to rejoin their regiment.”
“And I’ll have to sit in my cage like a good girl?” she asked acidly.
“That’s right, my love.”
“Brent—”
“Kendall, don’t you ever listen?” He stood impatiently and began donning his clothing. Kendall hurriedly picked up her gown, determined to be the one to walk away. “Brent—” she began.
“Kendall,” he interrupted. “I love you.”
Tears stung her eyes. “You can’t love me, Brent, and call me an idiot.”
A grin touched the corners of his lips. “Yes, I can,” he said softly.
“Not to my mind,” she murmured. “And if you tell me that my mind doesn’t matter, I will find the strength to rip you ragged!”
He laughed suddenly and reached for her hand, pulling her to her feet and helping her with the hooks on her gown despite her squirming protest. “Madam, we can have all this out one day. A full-scale brawl, if you choose. But not now. For now we have to survive. Let’s get some sleep. I don’t want the others to wake and find us gone.”
Kendall opened her mouth and then closed it, still angry that nothing seemed resolved. But he was right; they had to survive.
They returned to the place where the other men lay sleeping. She lay down beside Brent near the fire, but not until she succumbed to sleep did the rigidity of her spine disappear and allow her to accept comfort and warmth from his arms.
* * *
That night they hid in the mountain foliage as campfires in the distance warned them that they had at last stumbled upon a troop of soldiers. Brent and Stirling volunteered to act as scouts, and silently, stealthily disappeared into the night. They were back quickly, joyously announcing that they had indeed found a Rebel regiment.
It was Christmas . . . And it was wonderful to feel that they had really reached their homeland. Wonderful to share the meager rations with the soldiers on the field, to sing carols as they gathered around the fires.
But it was frightening, too. The Rebel division didn’t look much better than they did. Many of the men had bound their feet with strips of material because they had no shoes. Their uniforms were tattered and threadbare. Some wore blue coats they had stolen from
the Yankee dead.
Kendall sat at Brent’s side and sipped watery coffee, vaguely hearing the Christmas carols and subdued conversations of the men. Someone was telling Beau that half the camp was down with dysentery; an epidemic of fever had cost them twenty-four men just last month. Kendall was certain she would burst into tears. Then, just as surely, she felt a cold calm settle over her.
The South was going to lose the war. She was certain of it, just as she was certain that many of the men in the Tennessee regiment knew it, too. Proud, brooding eyes told her so.
They would fight on to the bitter end, but already they were backed to the wall, dodging the enemy blows . . .
“Kendall, did you hear me?”
“What?” She turned to meet Brent’s brooding gray stare.
“They’ve a wagon moving east tomorrow. Some of the amputees and other wounded men are being taken to Richmond to form a last-ditch defense troop for the city if it’s needed. They can take you with them. You won’t mind helping some of the men who are still recovering, will you?”
“Of course I wouldn’t mind helping. But what about you and—”
“They only have room for you. We’ll have to keep going on foot; they can’t even spare us a horse. But we should reach Virginia soon enough.”
“I—”
“You’re going, Kendall. They tell me the threat to Richmond has diminished recently and that President Davis’s wife is back in residence. She’s an old friend of mine, and she’ll watch—she’ll be glad to have you as a guest until I can get there and find out where Charlie has taken the Jenni-Lyn.”
“And then?”
“And then, if I can, I’ll take you home.”
“Where is home, Brent?” she asked softly.
The question gave him pause. South Seas no longer existed. But home was still farther south than Tennessee. “Back to Amy’s,” he answered wearily. “Kendall, I’ m too tired to fight with you.”
Kendall sighed softly. “I’m not fighting you, Brent. I was just asking.”
Nor did she fight him when he led her to the small tent they had been offered for the night.
She was glad to lie beside him, glad to accept his lovemaking time and time again, even if the only words that passed between them were the urgent whispers of passion. Parting had become a way of life during the sad years of war.
* * *
In the morning he saw her to the wagon that would bear her to Richmond. He was silent as he climbed into the buckboard with her, barely finding space to stand in front of her as she found a seat between two old corporals. He leaned down to whisper to her. “Be there, Kendall. Wait for me in Richmond—exactly where I’m sending you.”
She smiled dryly at him. “Where else would I be, Brent?”
“I never know—and that’s what always worries me.”
Kendall lowered her lashes. “I will be there, Brent. I promise.”
A whip cracked, and the buckboard jolted as the horses started moving in a slow, choppy trot. His whisper brushed huskily against her ear. “I do love you, Kendall.” He stood back to stare at her and saw that her blue eyes were taking on an indigo glaze as they shimmered with tears. “Even if you are a fool woman,” he added with a wicked grin.
She tried to smile, but the effort failed.
“And I love you, even if you are an insolent son of a bitch.”
He kissed her, savoring the last tender expression of love with the soft fullness of her mouth. Then he jumped with a smooth agility to the ground despite the erratic movement of the wagon. Her eyes were on him. Beautifully blue. Sad and resigned. Yet ever promising love . . . and a spirit that would live forever.
He watched the buckboard until it disappeared beneath the shimmer of the brilliant morning sun.
Chapter Twenty-One
March 1864
Brent did not immediately return to Richmond. Kendall was somewhat but not completely surprised. She was at last coming to know Brent very well, and when intelligence reports warned that the Yankees were planning an invasion inland from Jacksonville, Florida, to try to take the state’s capital, it seemed almost normal to Kendall that Brent, a Confederate Navy captain, should leave the sea and hurry south with Stirling to fight a land battle.
If she didn’t love him so much—and worry continually that a bullet would find its way to his valiant heart—she could have truly understood what drove him to fight when he was not even called upon by honor and rank to do so.
He had been fighting a war for over three years, yet he had seldom been in a position to help his own ravaged state. He and Stirling had been given special permission to join the Olustee battle, and when Kendall saw the newspapers following the Rebel victory, she was pleased for Brent’s sake. Tallahassee had been saved, and when the Rebel forces were being beaten back in many places, the Floridians had brought about a thrilling triumph. How satisfied Brent must have been, she thought, and she felt very close to him, for she knew what it was to fight from the heart.
And she did have his letters. Her lot was no worse than that of any other woman in the Confederacy; some wives hadn’t seen their husbands since the war began . . . and some wives would never see their husbands again.
And at least she was in Richmond. Varina Davis, the Confederacy’s first lady, had been unfailingly kind to Kendall. She had taken her under her wing the night she reached Richmond. Kendall had luxuriated in a long, hot bath. Then she had enjoyed a savory fish dinner and basked in the warmth of the fire and a glass of fine vintage brandy. Varina had arranged that Kendall be given rooms in an old inn nearby, and she frequently invited Kendall to join her for meals—or merely for tea so that she could keep her informed regarding the progress of the war, and of Captain Brent McClain.
Kendall admired Varina Davis tremendously. The First Lady of the South was soft spoken with a quiet dignity. She was a mother who had lost a beloved son during the war, not a soldier, but a toddler, for her little boy had fallen from the porch of their home in Richmond, the White House of the Confederacy. Kendall heard very sad stories about that day, about how the child had died in his father’s arms, and of how his mother had had to force the war letters and decisions to come to a halt for just hours—the only time granted to two such parents to grieve. Thinking of Varina’s son made her think of another little one who had died, Red Fox’s boy, and she knew that though none of them would ever forget most of the horror they had witnessed, they would carry the anguish over the children they had lost until death and beyond. But Varina did not allow herself to dwell on sorrow. She had other children to raise, and Kendall found herself delighted with the still-large Davis brood. She realized that she did dearly love little ones, and longed for one herself. She was in no position to be a mother, she knew—being a “scarlet” woman, the despised wife of one man, the mistress to another. And still . . .
Her landlady was the widowed mother of two daughters, one five, one fourteen, and Kendall spent what spare time she had in their company, sewing, reading, playing.
Wishing the world could be what it was not, missing Brent. And dreaming of a real home life. One day. Fearing that she couldn’t bear children, fearing equally that there could never really be a family life for her and Brent.
But perhaps it wasn’t all as bad as it seemed.
Kendall had learned from Varina that—far from being ostracized by her countrymen, as she assumed she would be—she had a small reputation as a heroine. She had fled a Yankee husband for her native land, and she had captured a Federal vessel and put it to use for the South. She had been taken prisoner at Vicksburg while trying to procure medicaments for a Rebel hospital, and that, too, embellished the legends being spun about her. That she was known to be the mistress of the famed and idolized Captain McClain only made her story more romantic and enchanting—especially to the young ladies of Richmond.
Kendall found it all a bit ironic, because she knew she was still in a precarious position. Although hundreds and thousands of good men had die
d on both sides, John Moore was still alive and unharmed. She had been labeled a spy by the Union, and although she would have never spoken her thoughts aloud to the still determined South, she was convinced that the war could have only one ending. And when the Federals were again in charge . . .
She should be planning an escape. She hadn’t seen her husband now in over two years, but just as she knew Brent, she knew John Moore. She knew that as soon as he could, he would find her. Even if the war dragged on another five years, or ten.
She should flee. Escape to Europe perhaps . . . but she knew she could never leave—not while she waited for Brent. And she knew that Brent would fight to the bitter end.
So she filled her days by working in the hospital in Richmond, suffering with the wounded soldiers, but never running away from their stench or their pain. The war had hardened her, and Vicksburg had given her experience. She was a welcomed assistant to the doctors; she never blanched or paled at the sight of a maggot-filled wound, and she never fainted during an amputation. That alone made her invaluable.
The work drained her strength, but the men revived her spirit. Some days she saw familiar faces—men she had grown up with in Charleston. Helping them, easing their pain, writing their letters seemed to bring back a part of her life she had lost. Old-timers spoke about her father, her younger patients could wistfully recall the barbecues, the hunts, and the balls . . . and she could remember being young herself.
At the end of March, Varina Davis gave her a letter from Brent. He had written it at the end of February, and in it she could sense his triumph and elation at having helped the Rebels expel the Yankees from inland Florida at the Battle of Olustee. He told her that he and Stirling were going to try to slip into Jacksonville and see their sister, then start back north to Richmond. Stirling hoped to visit his wife and son along the way. He hadn’t seen them since the winter of 1861. Stirling was due to be back with Jeb Stuart’s cavalry by the end of April, and Brent assumed that Charlie McPherson—who had taken the Jenni-Lyn on another run to England for supplies—would be back in a Confederate harbor by April or May.
Tomorrow the Glory Page 36