And One Wore Gray (2 page)

“You too!” she called after him. He nodded, smiled sadly, and was gone.

The next man who passed her by had a greater story of woe.

“Ma’am, I am lucky, I am, to be alive. I was held back ‘cause of this lame foot of mine here, took a bullet the first day. Comes July third, and General Lee asks us can we break the Union line at the stone wall. General George Pickett is given the order. Ma’am, there ain’t another man in my company, hell, maybe in my whole brigade, left alive. Thousands died in minutes.” He shook his head, and seemed lost. “Thousands,” he repeated. He drank from the dipper, and his hands, covered in the tattered and dirty remnants of his gloves, shook. He handed her back the dipper. “Thank you, ma’am. Thank you most kindly, ma’am.”

He, too, moved on.

The day passed. The long, winding wagon train of Lee’s defeated troops continued to weave its way over the Maryland countryside. Even though Callie was appalled by the stories told her by each weary man, she still held her ground. She already knew something of the horror of the battlefield, for less than a year ago, the battle had come here. Men in blue and in butternut and gray had died upon this very earth.

And he had come to her….

She dared not think of him. Not today.

She lingered by the well, but toward the late afternoon Jared began to cry, and she went into the house to tend to him.

He slept again, and she returned to the well, entranced by the flow of time.

Dusk came. And still the men continued to trickle by. She heard about strange places where battle had
raged. Little Roundtop, Big Roundtop, Devil’s Den. All places where men had fought valiantly.

Darkness fell. Since all who had passed her way had been on foot, Callie was surprised to hear the sound of horses’ hooves. A curious spiraling of unease swept down her spine, then she breathed more lightly as she saw a young blond horseman approach. He dismounted from his skinny roan horse and walked her way, thanking her even before he accepted the dipper she offered out to him.

“There is a God in heaven! After all that I have seen, still I have here to greet me the beauty of the very angels! Thank you, ma’am,” he told her, and she smiled even as she trembled, for in his way, he reminded her of another horseman.

“I can offer you nothing but water,” she said. “Both armies have been through here, confiscating almost everything that resembles food.”

“I gratefully accept your water,” he told her. He took a sip and pushed back his hat. It was a gray felt cavalry hat, rolled up at the brim.

It, too, brought back memories. “Are you a southern sympathizer, ma’am?”

Callie shook her head, meeting his warm brown eyes levelly. “No, sir. I believe in the sanctity of the Union. But more than anything these days, I just wish that the war would be over.”

“Amen!” the cavalryman muttered. He leaned against the well. “With many more battles like this one …” He shrugged. “Ma’am, it was horror. A pure horror. Master Lee was fighting a major one for the first time without Stonewall Jackson at his side. And for once, Jeb Stuart had us cavalry just too far in advance to be giving Lee the communication he needed.” He sighed and dusted off his hat. “We wound up engaged in a match with a Union General, George Custer. Can you beat that? Heck, my brother knew
Custer at West Point. He came in just about last in his class, but he managed to hold us up when he needed to. ‘Course, he didn’t stop us. Not my company. I’ve been with Colonel Cameron since the beginning, and nothing stops him. Not even death I daresay, because Cameron just plain refuses to die. Still—”

“Cameron?” Callie breathed, interrupting him.

The cavalryman started, arching a brow at her. “You know the colonel, ma’am?”

“We’ve—met,” Callie breathed.

“Ah, then you do know him! Colonel Daniel Derue Cameron, he’s my man. Never seen a fiercer man on horseback. I hear he learned a lot from the Indians. He’s not one of the officers who sits back and lets his men do the fighting. He’s always in the thick of it.”

Callie shook her head. “But—but he’s in prison!” she protested.

The cavalryman chuckled. “No, ma’am, no way. They tried to hold him in Washington, but they didn’t keep him two full weeks. He was wounded at the Sharpsburg battle here, but he healed up and come right out, escaped under those Yankee guards’ noses. Hell, no, ma’am—pardon my language, it’s been a while since I’ve been with such gentle company. Colonel Cameron has been back since last fall. He has led us into every major battle. Brandy Station, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg. He’s been there. He’ll be along here soon enough.”

She felt as if the night had gone from balmy warmth to a searing, piercing cold. She wanted to speak, but she felt as if her jaw had frozen. She wanted desperately to push away from the well, and to start to run. But suddenly, she could not move.

The cavalryman didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss. He didn’t realize that her heart had ceased to beat—then picked up a pulse that thundered at a frantic pace. He didn’t seem to realize that she had
ceased to breathe and then begun to gulp in air, as if she would never have enough of it again.

Daniel was free. He had been free for a long, long time. He had been in the South. He had been fighting the war, just as a soldier should be fighting the war.

Perhaps he had forgotten. Perhaps he had forgiven.

No. Never.

“I’ve got to move on,” the cavalryman told her. “I thank you, ma’am. You’ve been an angel of mercy within a sea of pain. I thank you.”

He set the dipper on the well. Bowed down and weary, he walked on, leading his horse.

Callie felt the night air on her face, felt the breeze caress her cheeks.

And then she heard his voice. Deep, low, rich. And taunting in both timbre and words.

“Angel of mercy indeed. Is there, perhaps, a large quantity of arsenic in that well?”

Once again, her heart slammed hard against her chest. Then she could not feel it at all.

He was alive, and he was well. And he was free.

He had been there a while, just past the fence, beyond the range of her sight. He had dismounted, leading his horse, a gray Thoroughbred that had once been a very fine mount but now resembled all the other creatures of the Confederacy—too gaunt, with great big haunted brown eyes.

Why was she looking at the horse?

Daniel was there.

He hadn’t changed. He still towered over her, clad in a gray frock coat with a pale yellow sash looped around his waist, his sword at his side, buckled on by his scabbard. He wore dun trousers and high black cavalry boots, muddy and dusty boots that were indeed the worse for wear.

He wore a cavalry hat. It was rolled at the brim, pulled low over his eye, with a jaunty plume waving
arrogantly from the top, laced to the hat at the narrow gold band around it.

She no longer gazed at his clothing, but met his eyes.

Those blue eyes she had never been able to forget. A blue framed by ebony dark lashes and high arched brows. A startling, searing, blue. A blue that penetrated her flesh with its fire, a blue that pierced into her, that raked her from head to toe. A blue that assessed, that judged, that condemned. That burned and smoldered with a fury that promised to explode.

They stared out at her from a face made lean by war, a handsome face made even more so by the lines of character now etched within it. His flesh was bronzed from his days in the saddle. His nose was dead straight, his cheekbones broad and well set. His lips were generous, sensual, and curled now in a crooked, mocking smile that nowhere touched his eyes.

“Hello, angel,” he said softly. His voice was a drawl, a sound she had never forgotten.

She mustn’t falter, she musn’t fail. She wasn’t guilty, though he would never believe her. It didn’t matter. She simply could never surrender to him, because he did not understand surrender himself.

Breathe! she commanded herself, breathe! Give no quarter, for it will not be given you. Show no fear, for he will but leap upon it. He is a horse soldier, and so very adept at battle.

But still her fingers trembled upon the ladle. Lightning seemed to rake along her spine, and at first, it was not courage that held her so very still and seemingly defiant before him. She was simply frozen there by fear.

She had always known that she would see him again. There had been nights when she had lain awake, praying that when that time came, all that had gone so very wrong between them might be erased. Many a night she had dreamed of him, and in those dreams she had
savored again the taste of the sweet splendor and ecstasy that had been theirs so briefly, once upon a time.

She would never be able to convince him of the truth. So very little had been left to her in this war. But she still had her pride, and it was something that she must cling to. She’d never beg.

Or perhaps she would, if it could do her any good! But it would not, and so she would not sacrifice her pride. The war, it seemed, had stripped all mercy from him. She wanted to be as cold as he was.

She wished that she had betrayed him. With all her heart, at that moment, she wished that she could hate him with the same fury and vengeance he seemed to send her now.

Angel, he had called her. With venom, with mockery. With loathing. Surely the word had never been spoken with such a tone of malice.

“Cat got your tongue?” he said, his tone still soft, his Virginia drawl deep and cultured—and taunting. “How very unusual. Weren’t you expecting me?”

He seemed taller even as he stepped nearer to her, leading his gray horse. Despite his leanness, his shoulders seemed broader than ever, his size even more imposing, his supple grace of movement more menacing.

Run! Run now! Blind instinct warned her.

But there was nowhere to run.

He was a gentleman, she reminded herself. An officer, a horseman. One of the last of the cavaliers, as the Southerners liked to call their cavalry. He had been raised to revere women, to treat them kindly. He had been raised to prize his honor above all else, taught that pride and justice and duty were the codes by which he must live.

He had been taught mercy …

But no mercy lingered in his eyes as they fell upon her now. She nearly screamed as he reached toward her, but no sound came.

He didn’t touch her but merely pulled the dipper from her hand, and sank it into the bucket. He drank deeply of the fresh well water.

“No poison? Perhaps some shards of glass?” he murmured.

He stood just inches from her. The world around her was eclipsed.

For a fleeting moment, she was glad. She had thought him in prison, but she had believed, always, that he lived. No matter what he thought, what he believed, she had desperately desired that he live. Swiftly, sweetly, in a strange shining hour that had passed between them, she had loved him.

No color of cloth, no label of “enemy,” no choice of flag to follow could change what dwelt so deeply in her heart.

She had loved him through the long months of war. Loved him even while the belief of her betrayal found root in his heart, nurtured by the vicious months of war. She had loved him, she had feared him, and now he stood before her again. So close that she could feel the wool of his coat. So very close indeed that she could feel the warmth of his body, breathe in the scent of him. He had not changed. Lean and gaunt and ragged in his dress, he was still beautiful. Handsome in his build and stature, noble in his expression.

He came closer still. Those blue eyes like the razor-sharp point blade of his sword as they touched her. His voice was husky, low and tense and trembling with the heat of his emotion.

“You look as if you’re welcoming a ghost, Mrs. Michaelson. Ah, but then, perhaps you had wished that I would be a ghost by now, long gone, dust upon the battlefield. No, angel, I am here.” He was still as several seconds ticked slowly past, as the breeze picked up and touched them both. He smiled again. “By God, Callie, but you are still so beautiful. I should throttle
you. I should wind my fingers right around your very beautiful neck, and throttle you. But even if you fell, you would torture me still!”

He hadn’t really touched her. Not yet. And she couldn’t afford to let him. She squared her shoulders, determined to meet his eyes, praying that she would not falter.

“Colonel, help yourself to water, and then, if you will, ride on. This is Union territory, and you are not welcome.”

To her amazement, he remained there, standing still. His brows arched as she pushed him aside and walked past him. Inwardly she trembled, her show of bravado just that—a show. But there was no surrender in this. That had long ago been decided between them. Regally, she walked on. She would not run. Head high, she continued toward the house.

“Callie!”

He cried out her name. Cried it out with fury and with anguish.

The sound of his voice seemed as if to touch her. To rip along her back, to pierce into her heart and soul and bring both fear and longing.

It was then that she suddenly began to run. She couldn’t look back. She had to reach the house.

She picked up her skirts and scurried across the dusty yard toward the rear porch. She leapt up the steps, ran across the wood planks and through the back door. She leaned against it, her heart leaping.

“Callie!”

His voice thundered out her name again. She gasped arid jumped away from the door, for he was hammering it down with the weight of his shoulders.

He had warned her.

There would be no place to run.

No place to hide.

She backed away from the door, gnawing on her knuckles. There had to be some place to hide!

He couldn’t strangle her. It might be war, but Rebel soldiers didn’t strangle Yankee women. What would he do to her?

She didn’t want to know.

“Daniel, go away! Go home, go back to your men, to your army—to your South!”

The door burst open. He stood there staring at her once again, and there was no taunting in his eyes now, or in his smile.

“What? Are there no troops close enough to come to your rescue once you’ve seduced me into your bed this time?”