“Don’t worry, Colonel. I do not blame you for anything you did.” She stared blankly at the wall as she spoke. “An officer cannot be expected to trust the enemy. That was a mistake reserved for me alone to make, and a grave one I assure you. Grave enough, indeed, that it shall never be made again.”
Hunter put his hands to his head and groaned like a wounded animal. “Please do not deny me the opportunity to explain.”
“I just told you I do not blame you,” Andrea said, still staring at the wall. “I have always respected you for your loyalty and honor and duty to country. You have always been a soldier first. You never tried to deceive me on that matter.”
“How can you talk like that after what we shared . . . here?”
“What we shared was lust!” Andrea wheeled back to face him. “You loathed me! Despised me for my allegiance! I accept that and do not begrudge you, for you were gentleman enough to have never claimed any different! Thank goodness! At least you never lied and claimed affection for me!”
Hunter stared at her incredulously, blinking repeatedly as if her words were blows that were actually making contact. “No. How can you think such a thing?” he choked helplessly. “I did … I do … I wanted to … I tried … but I thought … I thought …”
Hunter stood swaying, opening and closing his fists. He turned pale; his legs began to shake. He looked like he was going to be horribly sick.
“Your wound is painful to you?” Andrea hurriedly pulled a chair over to his shaking form.
Hunter sat down heavily. “Only the one in my heart,” he said, his head in his hands, his breath coming heavy under the weight of great suffering. Then he looked up. “You are concerned?”
Andrea kneeled beside him, one hand on the back of the chair the other tenderly on his knee, and studied his ashen features, the beads of sweat on his forehead. “I wish no hurt to you, Alex,” she said solemnly and sincerely. “I never have.”
“Nor have I. Yet I have hurt you dreadfully.” He sucked in a deep, quivering breath. “Please know, Andrea, that it was never my intent.”
“I have recovered,” she responded mechanically.
“I cannot believe you. Not when I look in your eyes.”
Andrea looked up and quickly stood, unwilling to face his expression of desperate hopefulness. “These eyes have seen much, Colonel.” She blinked repeatedly in an attempt to stop the images that assailed her vision. “If they do not glow with happiness, rest assured it has nothing to do with you.”
Hunter stood and winced with the pain it produced. “Andrea, what can I say to you? What must I do to win your trust again?”
“There is nothing to say, Colonel. The obstacles between us have always been too considerable and are even greater now.”
“And my desire even stronger,” he said determinedly. “Look into my eyes and test the truth there.”
Andrea refused to meet his gaze. “Nothing would change in the end, Colonel. Your distrust of me would lead to the same outcome eventually.”
“And that is why you left without explaining the truth to me? Without fighting?”
Andrea gazed into the nothingness beyond his shoulder and spoke the words that had been repeated in her thoughts a thousand times. “I merely submitted to the inevitable. I left because you ordered it. You ordered it because you did not trust me. You did not trust me because we are enemies.” She paused and tried to control her trembling voice. “Because we are enemies, I could not stay.”
“We are not enemies, damn it! Stop saying that!” Hunter grabbed his head in pain. “Can we not be a man and a woman?”
Andrea was not sure if he was asking her or the heavens above, so loud were his words proclaimed.
“Andrea.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “I will desire you, admire you, cherish you forever, whether our loyalties differ or not, whether our allegiances allow it or not. Can you not look beyond the color of my uniform to the heart that beats beneath it?”
“Release me,” she said, her voice and her expression cold.
Hunter’s hands fell limply to his side. “Do not make me your enemy, Andrea, for that I shall never be. The enemy is within you and your tormented, tortured soul. If you would only open it to me, I would willingly share your pain.”
“Share it? Or double it?”
Hunter swallowed hard at her words but did not dispute them. He turned instead to the night that the catastrophic chain of events had begun. “You must know, Andrea, that I … the Confederacy … owe you a great debt for your services.”
Andrea closed her eyes, trying to shut out the memories. “Pray do not speak of it.”
“But why? It was an act of kindness. Of compassion.”
“You must realize, that as an ally of the South, I became a traitor to the North, to my country, my flag.”
“Showing humanity is not a traitorous act—nor dishonorable. Providing relief will ever be more highly regarded than inflicting misery.”
“How can I look in the eyes of those I once stood beside?” She turned away, her chest heaving at the burden she had carried alone these months.
“You cannot blame yourself for doing what is right,” he said soothingly. “That cost cannot be measured.”
Andrea took a deep breath and shrugged, knowing she had said those same words to him once. But that was long ago. Nothing was the same anymore.
“You told me once your conviction for right and wrong is stronger than that for North and South,” Hunter said from directly behind her. “There is no crime in that.”
Andrea sighed heavily. “You are wrong. I arrived at Hawthorne with nothing but my honor. And I left with nothing at all.”
“Andrea, do not speak this way! Please, I beg of you! It is not true!” When she did not respond, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Andrea, you saved a Confederate officer from drowning in a stream once. Was that traitorous?”
Andrea took a deep breath. “There are some who would say it was.”
“Do you believe it was?”
She remained silent for a moment, wrestling with conflicting emotions. “I regret it not.” She turned around and looked him in the eye. “The regrets, I suppose, are all yours, Commander.”
Hunter closed his eyes and clenched his fists at the thrust of her words. “I spoke in anger, and I shall carry that burden and regret those words to my dying day.”
Andrea realized for the first time that he was trembling. This mountain of a man, this brave and noble soul, stood before her shaky and insecure, his eyes pleading, his countenance one of pain and misery that she knew had nothing to do with his wound. Yet there rested between them an interminable shadow.
“You can’t just throw it all away,” he finally said. “Not all that we’ve shared. You cannot deny the sacred ties that bind me to you.”
“Apparently you see things differently through the haze of time and distance, Colonel. For you cannot possibly remember our relationship as a harmonious one.”
Hunter looked deep into her eyes. “Perhaps not harmonious, yet a more perfect match could not be found. Our wills may run contrary, yet we are always in perfect accord. Even you, Miss Evans, cannot deny the attraction.”
Andrea looked away, unable to meet his gaze. “The only attraction I recall is between you and Victoria. No doubt she is waiting for you with open arms at Hawthorne.”
“You are mistaken on both counts, Andrea. There was no attraction on my part, and Victoria no longer resides at Hawthorne.”
Andrea gazed up at him questioningly.
“Miss Hamilton was a childhood friend—nothing more—as evidenced by the fact that she has tired of Hawthorne and taken up residence at Oakleigh until the war subsides.”
Andrea’s eyes flicked across his face, but she saw no sign of regret or any indication that he cared one way or the other that Victoria now resided with his nemesis John Paul.
“Tell me, Andrea,” he whispered, obviously hoping that what her lips said was in direct con
tradiction to the emotions of her heart. “Do I really cease to exist to you?”
“I have let go,” she said without thinking, “as you asked me to.”
“Asked you to?”
Andrea looked up and realized that dream and reality were so closely mixed she no longer knew the difference. The warm, compassionate eyes she stared into now were nothing like the ones that still chilled her in her dreams night after night. She watched the steel-gray eyes, usually smoldering with courage and determination, fill with a tenderness that flooded her heart with a feeling she thought was long ago dead.
“Andrea. Don’t let this war take any more than it already has. What we have, it’s strong enough to survive this war. I know it is.”
“No, the war’s grip is too tight.” Andrea shook her head. “It’s too big to think we can overcome it.”
“To hell with the war!” Hunter threw his hands in the air in desperation, then took her arms and shook her gently. “I love you,” he said huskily. “I love you, Andrea. Desperately. Nothing—not the war—nothing can change that!”
“You are wrong. The war had changed everything. And no one and nothing will ever be the same.”
Hunter looked blankly at the wall behind her, his lips tightly compressed. All his strength appeared to leave him. Not a muscle in his countenance moved as he stared into the distance with vacant eyes. “Andrea, I wish to begin again,” he said, trying to make a final stand. “I will refuse you nothing in my authority to grant. I will serve you in any way in my power and at any cost to myself.”
“Is the offer made out of pity or regret? Because I told you before, Colonel, you need not lament over something that was done honorably as a soldier.”
A sigh so deep it sounded like a groan escaped him. “Andrea, must you prove I have a heart by ripping it out?”
Andrea turned from him as she fought for control. She did not want to hurt him, but neither could she allow herself to be hurt again. Every inch of her being, every nerve, every sense, remembered the agony.
“You are in command of this battle, Andrea,” he said coming up behind her. “I only ask that you allow me to surrender with honor. Will you grant it?”
Andrea turned her head, startled, knowing that his nature did not allow him to say the words easily.
“No conditions,” he said as if reading her mind. “Complete and unconditional.”
Andrea felt his hands on her shoulders. “The terms sound satisfactory, but unfortunately I have found it does no good to lodge an objection with fate. And the fate of war has already decided against us.”
“Fate cannot deny us what our hearts most crave,” he said, turning her around. “I believe our love is sacred! There can be no bond stronger than that which unites enemies—”
“I’m sorry,” Andrea interrupted. “I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t? Can’t let down your reserve and accept the circumstances that have been thrust upon us? Won’t let down that wall you’ve built thick enough and high enough to keep everyone out?”
“I am enfleshed only by skin, not a coat of armor!”
“Then why won’t you allow yourself to feel? Why can’t you see that loving someone, needing someone, is not a sign of weakness? What are you so afraid of?”
Andrea turned her back on him, her mind numb and confused. Did he not know she had allowed herself to feel once, and the pain it had caused had been almost more than she could bear? Why could he not see that she was only pretending to be alive now? Of course she could not feel. A part of her had died the day she left Hawthorne. And it would never live again.
“You pretend to be so fearless,” Hunter said, interrupting her thoughts. “Yet when it comes to your feelings you are a coward.”
Andrea remained silent. He spoke the truth. She turned back to him and asked the one burning question that remained. “Tell me, Colonel, do you come to me now because of the promise?”
“No!” he yelled almost before she had finished the sentence. “This has nothing to do with Daniel! Damnation, your stay at Hawthorne had less to do with that promise than you can possibly know.”
Hunter let out his breath and leaned against the wall with an outstretched hand. “I am here because my heart … my soul … is not whole without you.”
“Then I pity you, because I’m sorry, but I have nothing left to give.”
Her words were like a deathblow. Andrea watched him let his breath out in a pitiful sigh. She could tell he had finally let go of all hope, given into dreadful despair.
After a few moments to regain his strength he spoke again. “I understand that I have no right to ask anything of you, Andrea, but your forgiveness I will seek before you leave here. Truly, I implore your pardon.”
Andrea forgave him all, but she did not form the words. “I blame no one but myself and never have,” she said in an unemotional voice. “You are clear, sir, of all liability.”
A look of intense regret flashed across Hunter’s eyes. “I brought a horse, in case you wished to leave tonight. I assume you would like to do that.”
Andrea nodded, her eyes closed tightly. Considerate to the core, generous to a fault, he had envisioned the possibility she would not want to spend the night. He was too chivalrous, too much a gentleman, to force her to do so.
“I-I have the highest regard for you and your wishes, and so will not seek you out again. But live or die, Andrea, my love for you will never end.”
Andrea heard the door close behind her as he went out to saddle the horse, and a fresh set of tears spilled down her cheeks. The pain that tore through her was like no other she had ever felt. But she had to send him away—had to get it over with—even if it was going to kill her.
After a few minutes, Andrea put her hand on the doorknob, drew a deep breath, and put her hood up against the cold night air. Hunter stood outside with the horse already saddled, staring at the sky, his face etched with pain.
Without words he handed her the reins. Then he pulled back her hood and held her face in tremulous hands, gazing at her as if trying to commit every feature to memory. “I am not the enemy, Andrea,” he said, brushing his lips gently against her cheek. “I will wait indefinitely for you to realize that, and will submit to any conditions you impose.”
Never had Andrea seen more devotion or affection as she glanced up at him. Never had she looked into eyes such as his and seen a noble soul so tortured by despair. She swallowed hard and blinked back tears as she turned to mount. Strong hands wrapped around her waist and lifted her effortlessly into the saddle.
Hunter put one restraining hand on the bridle and another on her leg as Andrea gathered the reins. “You do understand, do you not, that I have surrendered to you—heart and soul—unconditionally and without hesitation, and swear on all that is dear to me that I shall love you until the end of time.”
Andrea nodded, pretending to understand, pretending that she knew anything of the word. For a moment, just a moment, she thought about sliding off the horse, back into the comfort of his arms. But the fear of being hurt again, of hurting him, was too great. She could not allow herself to be weak, for she could never bear the crushing weight of pain like this.
“Andrea, so help me God, with my last breath I shall love you. Please …”
“Goodbye, Colonel.” Hunter let go of the bridle and Andrea urged the mare forward.
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
Her words went unheard. Colonel Hunter sank to his knees and heard nothing over the sobs that raked his body as darkness swallowed the woman he had hoped to never let out of his sight—or his arms—again.
Chapter 61
“Love comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.”
– Pearl Buck
It took Andrea more than a week to track down J.J., thanks to the weather and his constant movements. When she rode into the bustling Union camp, the sound of shouted orders, galloping cavalry, and scrambling orderlies indicated something was afoot.
Her curiosity inc
reased even more when she found that J.J. was not in his tent. A kind orderly allowed her to wait for him there, and after an hour’s time, he arrived. Andrea watched his expression change from one of fatigue and worry to shock and surprise when his eyes fell upon her.
“Jehoshaphat, Andrea! Where have you been? How did you get here? Why did you come?”
Andrea forced a smile. “Winchester. Horse. Do I need a reason?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, walking over and giving her a hug. “I’m just surprised. It’s been a long time. Is something wrong?”
“Does something have to be wrong for me to visit you?” Andrea kept her tone calm while suppressing the urge to remain in his arms and bury her head against his strong chest.
Despite her poker-faced response, J.J. seemed to sense that something was wrong. “You’ve heard.” His voice was soft and consoling.
Andrea pulled away and looked up at him. “Heard what?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” He waved his hand in air, then picked up some papers on his desk and put them down again.
“Is something wrong with you?” she asked, noticing his nervousness.
J.J. looked hard at her, apparently weighing whether or not to divulge something of great importance. “Since you’re here, let’s take a walk.”
Andrea tried to keep up, but J.J. seemed anxious to distance himself from camp. He finally stopped in a picturesque grove of young trees on the crest of a hill, and took a moment to light his pipe. “We’ve got him cornered,” he said.
“Who?” Andrea’s gaze was locked on a squawking blue jay insulting them mercilessly from a limb right over their heads.
J.J. only sighed, resting his foot on a rock and crossing his arms over his knee. His silence told Andrea the obvious.
“Hunter?” She grabbed his arm in alarm.
He nodded but did not turn around.
Andrea’s heart stood still, then fell to her feet, then beat tumultuously. Yet her blood seemed stagnate in her veins. “You cannot fight him!”
“It is my sacred duty, Andrea. You know that.”
“But how?” she asked, fearing she was somehow to blame.
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