With General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, he had been part of the army Lee had split in half for this daring invasion north. They had captured the town of Harpers Ferry—now being called “West Virginia”—and the thousands of Federal troops that had been holding it. Then, with no sleep and precious little food, they had ridden hard to meet up with Lee in this tiny town of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Under special assignment to Lee, he had seen much of the battle. Too much of the battle. He had seen the area they were already calling “Bloody Lane”—the deep trench along the farmlands where the Rebels had dug in. Where they had held so fiercely until the line had been broken and the Federal forces had rained down upon them with shot. Where bodies were piled upon bodies that were piled upon bodies.
He tossed and turned. He looked up. She was there. His angel. The beautiful angel with the fantastic dove-gray eyes and wealth of deep flaming auburn hair.
She leaned over him. She smelled so sweetly. Like the summer rose. She should have belonged to the past. To the beautiful, lazy days along the river. To the great, porticoed back porch of Cameron Hall. She should have been dressed in muslins and hooped petticoats, and she should have sat upon the wicker swing. Breezes, soft and sweet, should have played over her hair. He could see her, a great straw hat shading her eyes, swinging, white gloves upon her hands. An angel, she would turn to him. Her laughter would be music, as beautiful as her wide gray eyes, framed by the black sweep of her lashes.
Yes, she was there. Home, where the river whispered its faint harmony, where the green grasses met with blue sky and green water. Where Cameron Hall stood with its grace and welcoming beauty. Where the oaks were covered in moss. She was there, running through the trees. He heard her laughter, soft, clear, delicate, like the sound of the wind chimes in March. Against an oak she paused, looking back, her laughter escaping her once again. It was contagious, and he laughed in turn, and ran after her once again. Upon the slope, above the river, where dreams were woven, he caught her at last, and laughing together, they rolled in the sweet scent of the rain-washed lawn while the river drifted lazily by. He stared into her eyes. So intriguing a gray, rimmed with deep dark blue. He touched her cheek and held his angel.
Angel! Yes, an avenging angel who wielded a sword.
Visions began to collide. The river no longer whispered. He felt the heat, the terrible heat. But she was still there.
She was speaking to him. He tried very hard to understand her.
“… you must help me. You have to try to help me get free of this belt. Colonel, if I don’t cool you down, you’ll die. Don’t you understand me?”
Cameron Hall faded clear away. He was drenched. He was hot, he was shivering. Lamplight flickered against the handsomely decorated room. He lay upon a white bedspread, and it was no angel, but his gray-eyed Yankee vixen who leaned over him.
It only appeared that those dove-gray eyes were filled with compassion. She had meant to slay him once. He was nearly at her mercy now. He could almost taste death, it seemed that close.
“Colonel, listen to me!” she pleaded with him.
“Can’t!” he whispered.
“Please! I don’t want you dying on me!”
He almost smiled. Her voice. So soft. So musical. It should have been an angel’s voice.
“You’ll turn me in.” His words must have been very low, for she leaned against him to try to catch them.
“Colonel, you have to have some faith in me! Help me with this! I must cool you down. I swear to you, I’ll not leave you like this—”
He fought for strength. He managed to wind his fingers around her arm. His eyes met hers.
“Honor,” he interrupted her.
“What?”
“On your honor?”
“What?” she repeated. “Oh!” she breathed. She hesitated a moment. His eyes started to flicker closed. He was losing consciousness again.
“On my honor, Colonel! I’ll not leave you. Set me free, and I’ll not leave you.”
“Unless I die,” he commanded her.
“Don’t—”
“Unless I die!” he repeated.
“Fine! On my honor, I’ll stay with you. Unless you die,” she said.
His fingers were shaking. He could scarcely raise his hand, scarcely control it. He found the loop on his wrist. For a moment, he fumbled. He didn’t have the strength. He caught the leather with his teeth. He pulled with his last strength. She was free.
She was up in a flash. His last thought was that she had lied, that she had deserted him as soon as physically possible.
It didn’t matter. The room spun and faded.
Cannons exploded. He was in the midst of a fire. Fire was all around him, engulfing him….
It seemed to be much, much later that he first felt the coolness of the cloth against him.
He savored that coolness.
It touched his forehead, and moved over his shoulders. He no longer shook, but lay there, weak, disoriented. At first, all he knew was that sensation of coolness. Had he died at last, and gone to heaven? After all, how many times could he taunt death?
Was this a Yank prison? Did they heal him now, just to make his stay more wretched, until he could succumb to some other evil?
This was so tender, so gentle a touch.
He opened his eyes. They widened still further. She was still with him. Mrs. Callie Michaelson. His shirt was gone, he lay on his back, and she moved a cool, water-drenched cloth over and over his naked chest. She continued to do so for several long minutes before her eyes met his. She jumped, suddenly aware that he had been watching her.
“You’re still here,” he tried to say. The words were little more than a croak.
“I gave you my word of honor that I would remain,” she said. Her hand had stopped moving. It lay upon the cloth just over his heart.
He willed himself to find some strength. His fingers curled around her wrist. “You’d keep your word to a Reb?” he asked her softly.
“My word, sir, is a vow—no matter to whom it is given.”
He smiled slowly. “Well, then, I thank you, Mrs. Michaelson. You’ve probably saved my life.”
She stood up, gently tugging her wrist from his grasp. Regretfully, still curious as he surveyed her fascinating eyes, he released her.
“Not probably, Reb,” she told him. “I’ve most certainly saved your life. You were burning up. But it seems that your fever has abated. Let me get you some water to drink. I’ve barely managed to get a few glasses into you. Then I’ll get you something to eat, and when darkness falls again, you can go.”
She poured him a large glass of water from the pitcher at his bedside. Daniel sipped it at first. Then it suddenly seemed to be the most delicious thing that he had ever tasted. He swallowed down the whole of it in a matter of seconds. God, it was good.
She took the glass from him.
“Now, Colonel, you can rest, and I’ll get you some soup. But I warn you, I do feel that my word to you has been fulfilled. You are the enemy. And I want you gone.”
So battle was thus reengaged, he thought. Indeed, it was so, for there was a silver light in her eyes, shimmering, beautiful—and certainly something to reckon with.
He frowned suddenly, catching her wrist once more. He stared at her, a demand in his eyes. “You said, ‘when darkness comes again’?”
“Yes, Colonel, you’ve come in and out of consciousness for nearly forty-eight hours now.”
Two days! He had lost two full days.
She had stayed with him. She had not gone for the Yankee troops, and there must have been many Yankee troops in the vicinity.
Because of her word?
Once he had awakened to the certainty that she was trying to cut him down with his sword. But now she was still here with him. Because of her, he had survived another battle. But now she had warned him that he was her enemy.
“I have to get up,” he said and started to throw the sheets back.
“No!” she exclaimed.
“Colonel, wait!” For a few fleeting seconds her eyes seemed wide, alarmed. She stepped back demurely, her rich lashes falling over her eyes, but her manner entirely calm and regal. “You might not want to do that, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re buck naked beneath that sheet.” Stunned into momentary silence, Daniel stared at her blankly.
She sighed with impatience. “Colonel, I had to soak you in the coldest water I could find. I needed to cool down the length of your body for any hope of fighting the fever.”
“So you—stripped me?”
“Don’t sound so outraged, Colonel.” Her words were slow and cool, and she lifted a delicate brow to a high and imperious angle. “I told you. I had no choice.”
“What have you done with my uniform?”
“Your uniform was full of mud and blood.” She smiled. “I burned it. My apologies. It really wasn’t at all salvageable.”
“It wasn’t salvageable?”
“No more so than your lost cause, Colonel Cameron.”
“Lost cause, ma’am? Why, it still seems to me that we Rebs are riding circles around you Yanks.”
“You will not be victorious.”
“I, ma’am, will be,” he promised her.
“Then I must thank goodness, Colonel Cameron, that the war will not depend on one man alone.”
Mrs. Callie Michaelson could be one very demure and confident woman, Daniel thought. He didn’t know if he was outraged or not.
He smiled slowly, not knowing if he wanted to taunt her, or throw his arms around her and drag her down with him and show her all of the very real dangers of stripping down a man who had been at war as long as he had.
He’d never do such a thing. His sense of honor wasn’t really half as tarnished as she seemed to think.
Actually, he wasn’t sure that he had the energy left to drag her down beside him.
“Are you all right, Colonel?” she inquired. She knew she had the upper hand at the moment, and that he knew it. Those beautiful gray eyes were awfully smug.
“I’m just fine, Mrs. Michaelson. If anything, I’m surprised that a gentlewoman such as yourself would show such mercy as to strip down a Rebel soldier. I am amazed. How alarming it must have been for you! Such danger you cast yourself into!”
Her lashes swept her cheeks again, but he failed to draw a blush.
“Colonel, it seems to me that beneath the fabric, be it blue or gray, men do seem to be very much alike. I found nothing alarming about the act at all, and my dear Colonel, I must say, I hardly found you … dangerous.”
With that she spun around and started toward the stairs.
Daniel’s smile deepened. He closed his eyes. He had lost two full days. He didn’t know what was happening, and he didn’t know where he needed to get to rejoin his men or Stuart.
For the first time since the war had begun, he decided that he had to allow himself a certain period of convalescence. He had to get through the lines to get home. The cavalry would be awaiting him somewhere in Virginia.
But for the moment, he determined there was something else equally important.
He wanted Mrs. Callie Michaelson to know that he could be dangerous when he chose. Damned dangerous.
He rose, pulling the sheet with him and wrapping it around his waist. He paused for several minutes, finding the strength to stand. Life and energy slowly eased back into his limbs. He flexed his fingers and then his arms. He became certain that, weak as he was, he was not going to keel over with his first step.
With the white tail of sheet following him like a bridal train, he left the room and walked carefully down the stairs.
It was time to confront his enemy angel once again.
So there was no difference between men, was there?
She wanted battle? Well, battle was thus engaged.
She was about to discover that, indeed, there were very real differences between men.
———— Five ————
Callie wasn’t at all sure she had managed to appear calm and completely unruffled in front of her uninvited guest. By the time she reached the kitchen, her palms were very damp and her heart seemed to be thundering at a thousand pulses a minute. She nearly splashed the stew she had been cooking all over her fingers when she went to stir the large pot over the stove.
She was so much more comfortable with him when he was unconscious!
No, God forgive her, she hadn’t just been comfortable. She had actually enjoyed caring for him.
It hadn’t been easy at first. He had been on fire, his flesh simply burning, and she had been powerless, bound as she was to him. No matter how he had kicked and thrashed and turned, no matter how hotly he had burned, he had maintained a fierce strength. She hadn’t been able to free herself from the binds he had created between them and she hadn’t been able to get through to him. Alone in the darkness she had imagined his dying, and herself bound to him day after day while his body decayed.
But she had known it had been more than the fear of being tied to a dead man that had so frightened her. She didn’t want him to die. Cocky, arrogant Rebel that he might be, he had put something of challenge and vitality back into her own life.
And he was, in his masculine way, beautiful.
That was what she had enjoyed.
She’d not thought this at all at first. Once she had convinced him to free her, she had cut away his clothing because of the mud and the blood that matted his chest and his abdomen. And then she had been so busy soaking his flesh that she had paid it little heed. Tirelessly, she had run up and down the steps, fetching more and more water from the pump. She had opened all of the windows to cool the room, and then she had soaked him again and again.
It had been well into the day when she had known that she had succeeded, that he was going to live. He didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t speak—he gave her very little sign of life. But the awful heat began to cool, and his flesh was no longer so horribly dry to the touch. He breathed more easily. The fever was gone. He slept a sweeter sleep.
It was then that she dared to look at the man she had tended so long. From the handsome features that had so intrigued her from the beginning to the broad planes of his shoulders. His well-muscled torso and arms were taut and cleanly defined, making his skin smooth to her stroke now that the fever had broken. There was a wild profusion of dark hair upon his chest, hair as ebony as that upon his head, its course of growth just as defined as his muscle tone, swirling across his breast, than narrowing down to a fine little whorl at his navel. That fine lean line continued to his groin, where the wild nest of darkness flared deep again. Against it lay that part of him that brought a wildness to her heart, for even as he slept his maleness seemed to have a life of its own, veins pulsing vibrantly, his natural endowment both intimidating and tempting despite his restful state. She was absolutely shocked to find herself so fascinated to touch him, and very glad then of his sleep, for she must have blushed a thousand shades of purple. Indeed, she had turned him over so as not to find such a fascination with his anatomy, but then she had discovered herself admiring his back and, worse, his buttocks. From head to toe he was excellently muscled, so taut, so trim, so sleek and beautiful, like an exceptionally fine wild animal.
He wasn’t a wild animal, she reminded herself. He was worse. He was a Rebel soldier.
But while he lay there unconscious, she needn’t think of what he was, she told herself, or why she had worked so strenuously to save him. The breeze shifted, fall had come. Though the day was gentle and cool enough, she was suddenly made aware of the scent of death that still hung heavy upon the air so near the battlefield.
She closed the window and pulled the sheets up to his waist. She closed her eyes, holding her breath while memories assailed her. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, she had been in love. And she had been loved in turn. They had both been so young, at first exchanging shy, hesitant kisses in the fields, then exploring those kisses more deeply in the d
ark of the barn. They’d been very proper, of course, never dreaming of discovering any more of one another until their wedding night, but then that night had come, and love itself had led the way. Their first night had been awkward, but their love had let them laugh, and in the days and nights that followed, they had learned that their laughter was but an added boon. Callie had learned to cherish her young husband’s kisses, to thrill to his touch, to awaken in his arms.
But Gregory Michaelson now lay out back, his young limbs decimated by war, his soul surely risen, but his body nothing more than food for the ever triumphant worms. When he had come home to her in a military-issue coffin, she had been cold. Her heart had been colder than death itself, she was convinced. She would never love again, she swore it.
And she had never felt tempted to love again. No matter what soldiers came passing through, no matter what friend her brothers brought by so quickly on their few days of grace from the army, she had never known the slightest whisper of warmth to come to her heart.
Her heart had not warmed now, she assured herself.
But something else had.
Since she had first seen his face, she had found it attractive. From the first time his startling blue eyes had fallen upon hers, she had felt faint stirrings within herself. She had never felt fear that had been greater than her sense of excitement around him.
She had known, from somewhere deep within her soul, that she could not bear him to die. Not because she feared being bound to a dead man, but because it was him.
And now, in caring for him, she discovered herself ever more attracted to him. She wanted to forget the war. She wanted to go back and pretend that it had never come. She wanted him to be Gregory, and she wanted to lie down beside him and feel the warmth of his body stealing into hers, know the sweet rush of excitement that could sweep away all sense and reason.
Shivering, she stared into the pot of bubbling stew. The war had come. It was very real. The young blond Maryland farmer she had loved and married was buried in the yard, and she was a widow. A respectable, moral widow. She should be shamed by the very thoughts filling her head. Shamed by the beat of her heart. By the nervousness that shivered through her, by the recklessness that haunted all of her being.
And One Wore Gray Page 8