And One Wore Gray

by Heather Graham

  It was midafternoon when he rode by.

  He found her on the front porch of her house. Curiously, she didn’t seem to hear him as he approached. Even more curious, she was just sitting there, barefoot, in a very plain gingham dress with a high collar. Very proper for the time of day, he thought with a slow nostalgic smile. It had been a very long time since he had lost his mother, but he could still remember the things she was so determined to teach his sister, Christa. “Never, never show bosom during the day, darling. Only after five may a lady wear a dress that is at all revealing, and then, of course, in the most fastidious taste!”

  “Mother, I haven’t got a bosom,” Christa would reply. “Therefore, I can’t show it at any time.”

  “Oh, but darling, you will have one, you will!”

  “Yes, and Daniel and Jesse will grow hair on their chests. Maybe!” Christa would tease.

  And their mother would sigh, and roll her eyes, and then she would laugh and swear that she was raising a family of ruffians who were just playing at being gentry. Maybe that was true, but his mother could be the first “ruffian” among them because upon occasion, she would lose her austere dignity and slip off her shoes and go running through the grass with the rest of them. They had all adored her. To this day, Jesse was convinced that his father had died soon after she succumbed to pneumonia because no matter how he loved his children, he simply could not bear life without her.

  Maybe death was easier for them now. He wondered vaguely if they could look down from heaven and see that he and Daniel were on opposite sides.

  They would understand, he thought. They were the ones who had taught their children about conscience and dignity and moral duty and …

  Honor.

  He smiled slightly as he approached Callie. Yes, his mother might well approve of her. Her collar was high, her feet were bare.

  “Mrs. Michaelson.” He called her name softly. He was nearly upon her at the steps to the broad porch and she still hadn’t noticed him, despite the fact that her eyes were wide open. She seemed so lost and vulnerable and waiflike.

  She gazed at him. Her eyes widened and a look of panic flashed through her eyes. She leapt to her feet nervously, almost like a child who had been caught with something that she wanted to hide.

  “Colonel! Colonel Cameron!” she gasped.

  He frowned, dismounting from his horse. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Michaelson, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “I’m not frightened.”

  She was lying. No, she wasn’t, Jesse determined. She was very startled, but she wasn’t frightened. She had been seriously caught off guard. By him—in particular. He wondered why.

  “I didn’t think that I could come back, but as it is, I have to report to Frederick. I thought that I’d stop by instead of writing. I wanted to let you know that, yes, Daniel is in Old Capitol Prison. He’s well, and with any luck, he’ll stay there.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.” She still seemed unreasonably nervous, but her appreciation and concern showed in the beautiful gray of her eyes.

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  She regained her composure. She regained it so completely that he had to wonder if he hadn’t imagined the lost look in her eyes just seconds before. Her voice became soft and very gracious. Her eyes were downcast. Her bare feet were hidden by the sway of her simple skirt.

  “You’ve come out of your way for me, Colonel Cameron, and I appreciate it very much. Come in, please. Let me make you something to eat before you travel on.”

  “It’s not necessary—”

  “But it is. Please, Colonel Cameron. I’d very much like to have you here.”

  “All right then,” Jesse said. “Thank you, Mrs. Michaelson.” He hesitated on the step, watching her. What a miraculous change she had made. He suddenly felt like grinning.

  So here was the woman to bring down Daniel at last. It was intriguing. It was amusing. It could be wonderful.

  If they could just get through the war.

  “There’s just one thing, Mrs. Michaelson.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My name is Jesse.”

  “Callie, sir.”

  He smiled and walked up her steps.

  She paused. “Did you mention that we had met? Did he say anything?”

  Jesse reflected for a minute. Yes, Daniel had had his message for Callie. But Jesse wasn’t going to deliver it.

  “He wasn’t very talkative. Do you know, a home-cooked meal does sound wonderful, Callie. Shall we?”

  She turned, and he followed her into the house.

  Surely, he decided, there was some little twist of evil in his soul. He couldn’t wait to write to Daniel. He wanted to tell him just how gracious and beautiful Mrs. Michaelson was and what a wonderful meal he had had in her company.

  He was composing the letter even as he followed her into the house.

  It occurred to him that he had never seen his brother angrier than when he had been talking about Callie Michaelson. Maybe Jesse would merely be adding fuel to that fire.

  Maybe Daniel and this woman would just have to fight their own battles.

  And maybe, just maybe, find their peace.

  “Now?” Daniel said.

  Captain Farrow nodded solemnly. Daniel started to lift the vial to his lips, determined that his hand would not shake. But Billy Boudain—up and about and doing darned nicely—suddenly interrupted.

  “Jesu, Colonel, is it worth it? What if the—er—what if the box don’t go where it’s supposed to go?”

  “But it will go where it’s supposed to,” Daniel said wearily. All of the men were staring at him. It was night, and the prison was quiet. Every man in the room was up, tense, waiting. Daniel grinned, saluted—but then paused himself.

  The drug had not been his companion’s choice for his method of escape.

  Daniel hadn’t been able to tolerate the first method planned for him.

  Aunt Priscilla had planned on acquiring a Union Colonel’s uniform with all the proper medical insignia upon it, slipping it to Daniel, and boldly walking out of the prison with her arm slipped right through his, convincing the guards that Colonel Jesse Cameron was leaving after a quick visit to see to the welfare of his brother, and his recent patient, Billy Boudain. No one had realized just how alike the Cameron brothers were—not until they had been seen there together at the prison.

  Daniel had refused point-blank.

  “I’m not using Jesse.”

  “Colonel, if you’re afraid of getting caught, I imagine that you’ve got a justifiable concern. If you’re afraid of being hanged—”

  “I’m not afraid of being hanged, although I admit, it’s not the way that I want to go. I want to get out of here so badly, Captain, that I can taste it. I dream of it, night and day. But I’m not using Jesse. He saved Billy’s arm—and his life. And if he hadn’t, I still wouldn’t use him. Damn it, don’t you see, it just wouldn’t be right!”

  “But sir—”

  “What are we fighting for?” Daniel demanded.

  Captain Farrow had grown quiet, and the next thing Daniel knew, he was listening to a new and wilder plot. Aunt Priscilla could get hold of a drug. Foul-tasting stuff, but it would do the trick. Daniel would appear to be dead. The Union would try to hold his body, of course. They’d want to get hold of Jesse to see what he wanted done with his brother’s remains. But Aunt Priscilla would appear with a woman swearing to be Christa Cameron and between the two of them, they would demand the body.

  There would be no discernable heartbeat in Daniel’s body. His breathing would have become so slow that the doctor would not be able to detect it. The effects would last approximately forty-eight hours, so all that they had to do was get Daniel safely into Aunt Priscilla’s hands by then.

  Aunt Priscilla, Daniel reckoned, must be quite a reader. There were fine shades of Shakespeare in this wild scheme. He just hoped that the Union officers weren’t quite as up on their classics.
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br />   “Well, men …” he murmured.

  He shook his head. He capped the vial and handed it to Captain Farrow. “Put it away.”

  Farrow frowned.

  “Billy Boudain, Davie Smith, you’re both with me.” He clasped Farrow’s hand. “Sir, you are a fine inspiration to the men. I’ll see if I can’t arrange for a prisoner exchange for you once I get back to Richmond.”

  “But, Colonel—” Farrow said, confused.

  Daniel shook his head, grinning. “I’m walking out of here tonight, Captain.”

  “But—”

  “Watch me, sir.”

  He strode casually to the doorway. “Hey! You—you, the gorilla out there. Come over here. I’ve got to talk to you!”

  He saw the big man sneer. Everybody had been warned about Daniel Cameron. But this hulk thought he was just too big to be taken.

  Maybe he was. Daniel had one chance. Just one chance.

  When the guard approached, he moved like lightning. He reached through the bars, caught the man’s collar, and jerked him as hard against the bars as he could.

  Steel struck the man’s balding temples. The crack was quite audible. Heavy as lead, he started to fall.

  Daniel fought to keep him up. “Davie, get the hell over here! Get the keys out of his pocket before he falls. Quick.”

  Davie was shaking uncontrollably. “Is he dead, Colonel?”

  “No, he’s not dead. He is going to have one hell of a headache. He’s going to wake up as mean as a bear. So we’ve got to move. Fast.”

  Shaking, Davie managed to get the keys. Twisting, turning—and making way too much noise and taking way too long—Davie at last managed to twist open the lock on the door.

  Daniel flung the door open and dragged the body of the guard into the room. He slipped the guard’s revolver from its hip holster and shoved it into the waistband of his breeches.

  He saluted the others. Silently, they saluted in return.

  He urged Davie and Billy Boudain through the door. Even as he did so, he began to wonder at his own intelligence.

  Now what the hell was he going to do? There were still monstrously high walls around Old Capitol Prison.

  More than that, there were still scores of Yankee guards surrounding it.

  “What now, sir?” Davie demanded.

  What now, indeed? There was still an army between him and freedom.

  But he could almost taste that freedom.

  He could almost taste revenge.

  If only he hadn’t loved her so much.

  It seemed very late when Jesse Cameron rode away from the farm at last.

  She had been good, Callie thought. She had been cool and calm and composed when she had longed to shriek and tear her hair out. But he had been such a gentleman. So handsome.

  So damned much like Daniel!

  Except polite. And kind. And courteous to a fault.

  Once upon a time, Daniel had been tender.

  Too tender. That was why she was in this mess!

  Jesse had reined in his horse. He turned back, and she waved to him. Cheerfully. He turned again, and within minutes, he was swallowed into the darkness.

  “Oh, God!” she gasped aloud, and she sank down to the porch step, hugging her knees to her chest. A sob escaped her. It couldn’t be true.

  How long had Daniel been gone now? Over three weeks. Almost four. She picked up a stick and drew out lines for the days. She tried to convince herself that she was counting wrong,

  Yes, she was counting wrong. And she was imagining that she had been queasy several mornings last week and was downright sick every morning this week.

  She felt dizzy. It was a good thing she was sitting. She might have fallen. It had struck her like a ton of bricks while she had been feeding the chickens, just an hour before Jesse Cameron had come riding up.

  Jesse Cameron. With blue eyes just like his brother’s. That captured and imprisoned Reb who had sworn to come back for her.

  “Oh, God!”

  She buried her face in her hands. She had dallied with the enemy. She was going to have the enemy’s baby. Her brothers might very well come home and throw her out of the house. Her neighbors would turn their backs on her. She would be ostracized by everyone. It was horrible.

  She leaned back. She wondered why she didn’t feel so horrible. She was a fallen woman. She closed her eyes.

  She had loved him. She still loved him. She ached nightly for the way that she had been forced to betray him. Seeing his brother had reminded her of so many fine things about the man. His courage, his valor, his charm. The sound of his laughter.

  The harsh sounds of his anger, she reminded herself. And those blue eyes could turn as cold as ice.

  He’d had no right to condemn her. He hadn’t given her the least chance to explain.

  There was nothing that she could have explained at the time.

  He had judged her mercilessly. She should be as furious with him as he was with her. She should hate him just as fiercely.

  But after a moment, a smile curved her lip. The baby would still be part his. And maybe have those extraordinary eyes. Or the fine bone structure of his face. She might convince herself she was angry with him, she might even hate him fiercely in self-defense …

  But still, it was difficult to mind having him as a father for a child.

  Except that she was a woman alone, having a child alone.

  After a while, she stood up. Though it was dark, she found herself walking around the house in the moonlight to where her father’s stone stood in the graveyard.

  She pressed a kiss to her fingers and set them on Gregory’s tombstone, but she smiled because she did not feel the guilt she should have felt. It was her father’s ghost to whom she spoke softly, in the moonlight.

  “I think I want this baby, Pa. Can you understand? Oh, Pa, I’ve lost you, and I’ve lost Gregory. And I came out here and I watched all those handsome young boys die. This baby is life. In all of this misery, perhaps he can be hope. I think that you’d understand. I know that you’d love me anyway.”

  She sat there a while, and then she was stunned by how easily she had managed to accept what was happening.

  Perhaps the way that she felt would change in the morning, she warned herself.

  She wanted the baby. After all of the death, she wanted the life.

  But as she walked toward the house, she paused.

  The baby would be Daniel’s too.

  A chill settled over her.

  She had loved him. He had beautiful blue eyes, he was proud and tall and valiant and all manner of good things…

  And he wanted to throttle her.

  Daniel …

  She’d had enough for one night. She’d have to worry about Daniel in the morning.

  Thank God he was locked up in prison!

  ———— Fourteen ————

  The hallway was silent; the door was closed behind them. Daniel moved as quietly as he could along the hallway until they came along the next set of guards.

  They were seated at a table, playing cards. Real Union greenbacks and gold coins were casually laid out on the table.

  There were three guards and three of them. Pretty fair odds, Daniel decided. And they weren’t expecting any trouble. They were playing loudly. A whiskey bottle sat in the middle of the table. Daniel was certain Lieutenant Colonel Dodson would not be pleased to know that his men were imbibing while on duty.

  He smiled, and then his smile faded. He didn’t want to kill anybody. It was horrible enough to kill in battle, when an opponent was seeking his death. If this went smoothly enough, they wouldn’t have to spill any blood.

  He motioned to Billy, pointing to his boot, and to the man in the center, the one with his back to them. Billy was healing nicely, but Daniel still wanted to give him the advantage of complete surprise. Davie, watching Daniel’s signs to Billy, quickly understood Daniel’s strategy, and nodded when Daniel pointed to the guard that he would take on.

>   He raised his hand, then one finger, then another, and then a third. And simultaneously they moved, striding in as if they had every right to be there.

  “Hey!” began the corner man, the first to see them.

  It was all that he managed to say. Daniel had the guard’s heavy revolver and he gave the man a good clunk on the head with it. He crashed over, just as Billy and Davie reached their victims and likewise dispatched them with good clouts to the head.

  “Look at this, will you? This ole bluebelly here was sitting pat on a full house,” Billy commented.

  “And look at this one!” Davie exclaimed. “Why, the ace of spades is sitting up his sleeves.”

  “Leave it,” Daniel advised. “They might wind up more interested in fighting over the card game than looking for us.” He picked up the bottle of whiskey and began to liberally sprinkle it over all of their heads and the card table. He grinned at Billy and Davie. “If they don’t tear into one another, Dodson will. It will buy us some time. Billy, get that Colt over there. What a handsome gun! Davie, there’s another service revolver there in that Yank’s holster. Slip it out and let’s move on.”

  Although that Old Capitol was crawling with guards, they managed to move about the prison rather easily. Billy was hesitant—Daniel knew why. The Yanks weren’t expecting any break like this. Not that they hadn’t had a few already. But prisoners hadn’t risen up en masse, and none had pulled any tricks recently. Live men sometimes went out with their dead companions in coffins, and Daniel should have been playing a dead man in a coffin by now himself. He was glad he wasn’t. He’d heard tell of an infantry commander who’d gone out of a Chicago prison that way. And he’d been buried alive, just as planned. But communications had gone awry, and when they’d dug him up two weeks later, he was found glassy-eyed, his fingers shot through with the slivers he’d received trying to dig his way through the box.

  Daniel, Billy, and Davie came down another hall. The exercise yard was ahead of them. It was small, and the high walls surrounded it. There were guards at the gates and guards all around the high walls.