And One Wore Gray (4 page)

He turned and started out the doorway.

With her baby. His baby. Their baby.

He couldn’t—he wouldn’t!—be leaving with Jared, she thought. Jared was just an infant. Daniel couldn’t begin to care for him. Even he wouldn’t be so cruel.

But his footsteps were retreating down the stairway.

“Daniel!” She found her voice and a frantic energy, at last. She raced after him, and this time it was she who accosted him at the foot of the stairs. “What are you doing? Give him to me! Daniel, he’s crying because he’s hungry. You can’t take him from me! Daniel, please! What do you think you’re doing?”

Daniel stood stone still, staring at her. “He’s my son.”

She didn’t know what to do, and she blundered, frightened of his behavior. “You can’t begin to know that—”

“The hell I can’t. What a fool you are to try to deny it,” he said softly, coldly.

“Daniel, give him back!”

“He doesn’t belong here. He belongs at Cameron Hall,” Daniel said stubbornly.

Callie’s mouth dropped. “You can’t take him! He’s barely two months old. You can’t care for him. Daniel, please!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She caught hold of his elbow and held on hard. “Daniel, he needs me. He’s crying because he’s hungry. You have to give him back to me.”

A slow smile curved his mouth despite the baby’s hungry screaming. “You didn’t even intend to tell me about him, did you, Callie?”

She shook her head, the tears now brimming in her eyes. “Yes, I intended to tell you!”

“When the hell did you intend to tell me?” he bellowed.

“You didn’t give me a chance. You came in here condemning me—”

“You knew that I’d come back. Maybe you didn’t,” he corrected himself bitterly. “Maybe you thought that I’d rot and die in that camp!”

“Damn you, Daniel, you can’t kidnap my son!”

“My son. And he’ll have my name,” Daniel said. To her amazement, he started walking by her.

“You can’t care for him!” she cried out. Of all the things that he might have done to her, she had never imagined this.

He stopped and turned back with a smile. “Oh, but I can, Callie. I can find a mammy to care for him easily enough. Within the hour.”

“You wouldn’t!” she breathed.

“He’s a Cameron, Callie, and he’s going south tonight.”

“You can’t take him away from me! He’s mine!”

“And mine. Created under very bitter circumstances. He’s coming home, and that’s that.”

“This is his home!”

“No, his home is south, upon the James.”

No matter what had passed between them, no matter how bitterly he might have learned to hate her after the months that lay between them, she still could not believe it when he stepped past her again.

“I’ll call the law!” she cried out.

“There is no law anymore, Callie,” he wearily said to her over his shoulder. “Just war.”

She followed him to the door. Jared was crying with an ever greater vengeance, furious that his meal was being denied him. The tears she had tried to hold back burst from Callie’s eyes, and streamed down her face. “No! You cannot take him from me!” she thundered, and she slammed against him, beating her fists against his back.

He spun on her, his blue eyes fierce, furious, ruthlessly cold.

“Then you’d best be prepared to travel south, too, Callie. Because that’s where he’s going!”

She stepped back, stunned once again.

“What?”

“My son is going south. If you want to be with him, you can prepare to ride with me. I’ll give you ten minutes to decide. Then we’re moving. Who knows, Meade just may decide to chase Lee’s army this time, though it seems poor Uncle Abe can’t find himself a general to come after Lee. But I’m not waiting. So if you’re coming, get ready.”

South!

She couldn’t travel to Virginia. Her heart had been set long ago, at the beginning of the war.

No …

She couldn’t travel south because she was against slavery, but more than that, because she had understood
President Lincoln’s war from the beginning. The first shots hadn’t been fired because of emancipation. The war had begun because the southern states had believed they could secede, that states’ rights were supreme. Now the war was about so much more.

She couldn’t go to Virginia because of Daniel Cameron. Because he was convinced she had betrayed him. Because he was determined to be her enemy with a far greater hostility than any northern general had ever felt for Bobby Lee.

She reached out her arms to him. “Daniel, give me the baby. Just let me feed him.” He stared at her in an icy silence. She gritted her teeth. “Please!”

Daniel hesitated no longer. His frigid blue stare still pierced her condemningly, but he brought the baby to her. Jared was suddenly in her arms, warm, trembling, precious, still screaming. Callie shook, knowing that the baby meant more to her than anything in the world.

More than war. Far more than pride or glory.

“Ten minutes, Callie,” Daniel said. “I’ll be waiting on this step. For Jared, and you, if you choose to come. But Jared is coming with me.”

“But we’re enemies!”

“Bitter enemies,” he agreed politely.

“I could betray you again, moving through this territory.”

“You’ll never have the chance again,” he promised softly.

She met his startling blue gaze and then turned and fled up the steps with Jared. She ran into her room, her heart beating. She kissed her son’s forehead, and distractedly pulled upon the strings of her bodice, freeing her breast for the baby to nurse. She touched his cheek with her knuckles, and he rooted for a moment before latching onto her to suckle strongly.

Love, enormous waves of it, came rushing through
her. She rested her cheek upon her baby’s head. She would never let Daniel take him from her.

No matter what had been. No matter how bitter Daniel might still be.

No matter what it was she had to face as a Yank in the South.

She closed her eyes. Daniel was wrong. Their son had been conceived in love.

Not even a year had passed since she had first seen Daniel Cameron.

So little time …

But oh, what a tempest that time had been!

She closed her eyes and remembered….

September 1862
Sharpsburg, Maryland

Once Daniel fell, the reality and the dreams began to blend together.

They had come riding in with glory, a cavalry unit with extraordinary horsemanship, all of them handsome astride their fabulous mounts, swords gleaming in the late summer sun, their plumed hats flying like the banners of long-ago knights. Ah, but that’s what they were, the last of the cavaliers, fighting for honor, for glory, for love, for the intangible essence that embodied a people….

No, that was what they had been. The love was there still, as were the dreams of honor. He had been fighting far too long to believe any longer in the glory of war. And seen too close, he and his horsemen were not so splendid. Their uniforms were torn and tattered, their boots were worn, their faces were gaunt and haggard. Yes, they rode with their steel swords glistening in the morning sun, and when they let out with their Rebel cries, they were both fierce and beautiful, and awesome to behold. Riders of destiny, riders of death.

He had not lost his horse while engaged in battle.
Not while locking swords with men in blue with faces he dared not look upon too closely.

It was the cannonball exploding just at his heels that had unhorsed him. For a few, brief, shimmering moments that seemed to waver between life and death, he had known what it was like to fly. It had all been so painless.

But then he had come crashing down, and the earth had embraced him ferociously. It was then that the pain came, searing and shooting through his temples even as the fragrant grass of the rich Maryland farmland teased his flesh. Then had come a sudden, stark darkness.

And then the dreams.

One moment, he could hear the horrible whistle of the cannons, could see the fires bursting against the beautiful blue of the summer sky. He could hear and feel the pounding of the horses’ hooves, the clang of steel, and the horrible cries of men. Then it was all gone, as if a clean, clear breeze had come to sweep it away.

The James River. He could feel the breeze that came off the James, that sweet coolness, touching his cheek. He could hear the drone of bees. He was lying in the grass on the slope of the lawn at home, at Cameron Hall, staring at the blue sky above, watching as white clouds idly puffed by. He could hear singing, down by the smokehouse. Something soft, and sing song, a spiritual. A deep, low male voice rumbled, and beautiful female voices chorused around it. He didn’t need to open his eyes to see the smokehouse, or the hall, or the endless slope of green lawn where he lay that stretched all the way down to the river, and the river docks and the ships that came to take the crops to market. Nor did he need to open his eyes to see the garden, bursting with bright red summer roses that wove enchantingly down the path from the wide, porticoed back porch of
the hall. He knew it all, like he knew his own hand. It was home, and he loved it.

But he needed to get up. He could hear Christa’s laughter. She would be coming up the slope with Jesse to get him. Pa would have sent them to bring him in for dinner. Jesse would be teasing her, and Christa would be laughing. They’d both be ready to taunt him for his daydreaming. Christa, still just a little girl, was so accomplished in the house. And Jesse always knew what he wanted. An appointment to West Point, a few years in a good medical school, and an assignment in the West. While he …

“Daydreaming, Daniel?” Jesse asked. His brother sat down beside him on one side, while his sister, her bright blue eyes as shimmering as the sky, sat on his other side.

“Nothing wrong with daydreaming, Jess.”

“No, nothing wrong at all,” Jesse said. He was the most serious of their family, and he always had been. He was the peacemaker, calm, decisive, and as stubborn as they came. There weren’t all that many years between them and so they had always been the best of friends. They might fight, but let anyone else ever make a critical comment about either of the Cameron boys and the other brother would leap to his defense, willing to take on any fight. And no one had best ever find fault with Miss Christa, for both boys—though they might torment her endlessly at home—would instantly be ready for battle.

“Dreaming about what?” Christa demanded. She laughed, and the sound was like all the others that Daniel heard, the ripple of the river, the whisper of the breeze. It was a sound that belonged to the languorous days of summer, to childhood.

“Horses, I daresay,” Jesse volunteered for him, and pulled his hat low over his head. The eldest of the threesome, he was always quick to speak his mind.

Daniel grinned. “Maybe. Christa is going to be the most beautiful and accomplished young lady in the country, you’re going to be the greatest doctor since Hippocrates, and me, well, I guess I’m going to be a horse master.”

“The best darned horse master this side of the Mississippi,” Jesse promised him.

Daniel leapt to his feet, swinging an imaginary sword. “The
best
horseman, the best swordsman. I’ll be just like one of King Arthur’s knights!”

“And save damsels in distress!” Christa laughed, clapping.

“What?” Daniel demanded.

“Damsels. Fair maidens in distress. Well, it’s what all the best knights are supposed to do.”

“They’re supposed to fight dragons.”

“Or Indians,” Jesse observed wryly.

“Everyone know that you have to save the damsels from the Indians and dragons!” Christa insisted.

“Woah!” Jesse, always the voice of reason, warned them. “Give him time, Christa. Damsels tend to be interested in knights before knights tend to be interested in damsels. He’ll get there. But right now, there’s supper on the table. Honey-smoked ham and sweet potatoes and new peas and fresh-squeezed lemonade.”

A shell burst in the sky. Jesse’s memory disappeared. Christa’s laughter dissolved into the shriek and whistle of a cannonball as it flew through the air.

He was no longer lying on the cool green grass of home. He was in the farmlands of Maryland. The grass was no longer green, it was churning to mud beneath him as horses pranced and dug up the earth, and men fell and spilled their blood upon it.

He had learned about saving damsels. He’d never really met a dragon, but he’d had his day with the Indians in the West.

And he’d met enemies he’d never imagined. His own countrymen. Yankees. Men he’d gone to school with. Men with whom he’d fought in the West.

His own brother …

How much better it would have been, had there been dragons!

He was bleeding himself, he knew. Not a new wound, but an old one, ripped open as he had flown through the air.

He couldn’t feel the pain but suddenly felt the spatter of mud against his cheek.

He wondered if he was dying.

He tried to turn. If they’d been able to take him, his men would never have left him here. Unless they had been convinced that he was dead.