And One Wore Gray (55 page)

June 7, 1864
Cold Harbor, Virginia

Since the third of June, Daniel was certain that he had done nothing but listen to the moans and cries of the wounded.

They were mostly Yanks out there now, but since battle had been engaged here, the Union man in charge, General U. S. Grant, had refused to seek any parley to remove his dead and wounded from the field.

Perhaps it was because the commanding general who asked first to bring his wounded from the field was customarily the general admitting to defeat.

Grant had been defeated here, whether he wanted to admit it or not. In these days of almost constant battle, from the Wilderness to Yellow Tavern to Spotsylvania, and now here, at last, to Cold Harbor, Grant had been defeated. Richmond, once again, had been saved.

Grant’s forces were still in their trenches and so were Lee’s. The southerners watched carefully, wondering just what Grant would do next.

Riding in back of the curiously quiet lines, Daniel wondered why he felt no exuberance.

Perhaps there was none left to feel.

Beauty was dead, dead and buried. Daniel still felt numb when he thought of it. Stonewall a year ago, Beauty now, and so many others in between.

Now they had beaten back even Grant, but Grant didn’t retreat. His men lay on the field, screaming and dying, but he didn’t admit defeat.

The Confederates had brought in a number of the Union wounded with their own, risking forays out into the field of battle. To listen to the men scream was torture; it was no hardship to bring them in, be they Yanks or rebels.

Everyone seemed to be waiting.

Daniel reined in. He still smelled like soot and ashes, he thought, and that from the Wilderness.

Never had he seen anything like it, or imagined anything like it. Smoke and fog so thick that Union troops fired on Union troops and southern troops did the same. Then the forest burst into flames, and then again, the horrible screams of men and horses trapped in fallen foliage or wounded too severely to try to escape the lapping flames of the fire.

So much bloodshed in so very few days.

The problem was that they could lick the Yankees. They had licked them time and time again. But more of them came. No matter how many they battled and how many they killed, there were always more.

They were outnumbered and outgunned.

“Colonel Cameron, sir!”

A young soldier on horseback came riding up to him. “We’ve stopped a conveyance on the road, sir. There’s two ladies, two children, and a black woman in it.”

“Yes?”

“Well, the women claim to be kin of yours. Your wife and your sister-in-law.”

His heart suddenly slammed against his chest. Callie, here?

He was instantly torn in two. He had wanted to see her so damned badly for so very long!

They couldn’t possibly be such fools, riding around the countryside with battle waging like this!

“Where is this conveyance, soldier?” Daniel asked. He called to one of his lieutenants to take charge of the forces directly beneath him, and he rode swiftly behind the soldier back to the main road. The Yankees were well to the other side of it, but the fighting here had been so fierce and so vicious that he felt ill thinking of Callie and Kiernan stumbling upon it.

With the children!

It couldn’t be the two of them. Surely, Kiernan would not be so foolish. But it was them.

He reined in his horse and leapt down from it at the road, staring at the wagon.

Callie and Kiernan were both in the front, waiting. Daniel was startled at their appearances, for though nothing could take away the extent of their beauty, they were far different from the women he had last seen at Cameron Hall. Both were in black, the color of mourning. In honor of Beauty, or perhaps in honor of little Joey Davis. They were minus their hoops, their gowns were simple, and they were both very thin.

“Jesu!” Daniel breathed. His eyes fell upon his wife, and only his wife. His stomach and heart seemed to catapult together. His fingers were shaking.

No black costuming could take away the radiance of her color. Silver-gray eyes fell on his, and warmth surged through him. Dear God. It had been so long since he had seen her.

Pretend that you love me!

He had pretended through all these awful months of warfare. Dreamed of her through the nights when he had managed to sleep through the screams of the dying.

And she was indeed before him now,

All he could think of was the dangerous mission they had set upon, and how she dared risk herself so!

There were Yanks everywhere!

She was a Yank!

It wasn’t so much that she might have run into Rebels or Yankees, it was the fact they might have stumbled upon deserters, as they had once before, in nearly this same place, and at nearly this same time, years before.

Before he had met Callie, before he had loved her.

Temper! he warned himself. For those silver eyes were on him, brilliant, beautiful. He wanted to crush her into his arms, and hold her so tightly.

But he didn’t embrace her; he was shaking top hard to do so. Long strides brought him to the wagon.

“What in God’s name do you two think that you’re doing?” he thundered.

He reached for Callie, grabbing her around the waist, and bringing her down against him. The warmth of her body seemed to explode against him. Her toes touched the ground, and he met her angry eyes.

“We’re trying to get home,” she informed him.

She had called Cameron Hall her home.

“What?” he said incredulously. He looked from Callie to Kiernan, and back again. “Haven’t you heard? The fighting has been constant here!”

Callie was still against him. She’d made no attempt to fight his hold. He looked down into her eyes again. She smiled suddenly.

Smiled, and the anger faded from her eyes. The silver light was in them once again. Without conscious thought he touched her face, his thumb tracing over her cheek. She really had the face of an angel. She was hatless, and her hair streamed down her back in all its glory, the deepest, richest fire imaginable. I love you, he thought. I have loved you for years now.

“You could have been killed, you little fools!” he murmured.

“Daniel, Kiernan and I must get home. Christa is going to be married, remember? And …”

“And we didn’t know if you or Jesse would manage to get there, and so we decided that we had to,” Kiernan finished from the wagon.

“Jesu! Christa would understand. We’re in the midst of a war!”

“Mum?”

A sound from the back of the wagon suddenly distracted Daniel. He looked around the rough wood exterior and jumped.

His son was standing, holding on to the wagon. Bright blue eyes looked at him with no recognition. A second pair of blue eyes stared at him, too, as John Daniel leaned up to see what was going on. Except for the difference in their ages, the little boys might have been twins.

Like Jesse and I, he thought. And then emotion seemed to rush in on him. My son is standing, maybe walking. He forms words now, and he doesn’t know who I am. He has gotten so big, and I haven’t been there to see him stand, to take his first steps.

This was war. He could still remember Beauty’s strong feelings on the subject. Duty came first. House and home came later.

Still, how could a man make house and home come later when his family was sitting in front of him, and the war itself was all around them?

He decided that he didn’t give a damn about the war for the moment. He left Callie’s side and walked around to the wagon.

“Hello,” he said softly to the boys.

“Mum,” Jared repeated.

“He doesn’t say very much,” John Daniel advised his uncle. “He’s just a little over a year, you know.”

Daniel grinned, tousling his nephew’s hair. “And you’re just over two, young man!” He reached out to his son. Jared observed him with wide blue eyes. Don’t shy away from me, he thought. Please, don’t shy away from me!

For a moment, he was certain that Jared would. Then the little boy reached out with his chubby little arms and Daniel swept him up, hugging him fiercely.

Callie had come around the wagon. He saw her over his son’s dark head. She watched him gravely, and he wondered for a brief moment just what it might be like if they could only have a normal relationship, if they could only have a life! She was so beautiful. And she had given him this child, and so far she had cared for his child alone, and she had done so in his home, or in Richmond.

“He’s big now,” Daniel told her softly.

She smiled. She’d never seemed to begrudge him Jared, or to begrudge him any of his son’s affections. She’d been so independent, but she’d bowed to him in so many things. Yet, he’d been stronger, he’d had the ability to take Jared and make her come south.

But he’d never forced her to stay, yet she had done so anyway.

“Very big,” she agreed.

“Why in heaven did you come to Richmond?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “They needed help at the hospital.”

“So you came to Richmond to patch together Rebs.”

“Rebels, Yankees, whoever came in,” she agreed.

He buried his face against his son’s throat. “You were there for little Joe’s funeral?”

“And Jeb Stuart’s,” she said softly. “We could hear the cannon through it all.”

“What did you two think that you were doing, riding out with the children like this?”

“Daniel, I’m not afraid—”

“Callie, you should be afraid!”

He gritted his teeth. They hadn’t been so far from here a little over two years ago. Was it two years ago? It felt as if he had been fighting forever. He had been injured, Kiernan had been expecting the baby, and the ride home had seemed endless. We’re going in circles! he thought, feeling they were back to that time. Somehow, he had to get them home. Grant’s forces were quiet at this hour, but that could change anytime.

He handed Jared to Callie. “I’ll ask for time to bring you home,” he told her.

“Daniel, we are capable—”

“Callie,” he snapped roughly, “you’re taking my son and my nephew through battle lines!”

She stiffened. Dear Lord, why was he always yelling? What little ground they had made toward one another in a year of absence and a smile seemed suddenly to be swept away.

“I have never risked our child!” she said. He thought that the brilliance in her eyes might be that of tears. “But take time, Daniel, yes, please, take time! it’s a way to get you out of the front lines of this war!”

She sounded bitter, ironic.

Almost as if she had missed him.

He turned away from her and mounted his horse, anxious to find his superiors. Had it been just two days before, he knew he never would have been given any leave to travel.

But now Grant was ominously silent.

He was able to find both Wade Hampton—Stuart’s successor with the cavalry—and Fitzhugh Lee, Robert E.’s talented nephew. Both thought him insane at first, but the explanation that his wife had simply appeared in the road was taken well by both men, and he was granted leave to escort his wife and son back to Cameron Hall.

Signing a pass so that Daniel could move unharrassed
through any Confederate lines, General Hampton warned him, “Make haste. It seems that the Yanks have started terrorizing all of the countryside, and I must have you back. On your honor, sir!”

He left his lieutenant in charge, and begged his men to obey him as they would himself, promising to return swiftly.

He came back to the wagon, tied his horse to the back, and urged Callie to move over so that he might take the reins.

He met Kiernan’s eyes over Callie’s. They both remembered the last time they had taken such a ride. They both remembered the dangers they had met along the way.

He urged the horse forward. “Home, horse!” he told the nag. And they started off.

They rode for miles in near silence, Janey in the back with the boys; Daniel, Callie, and Kiernan in the front. No troops accosted them.

The cannons were quiet. Along the lush and beautiful countryside, they heard no sound of guns. Summer had come to the land beautifully. The foliage was brilliantly green, and there was a soft breeze as they rode. Upon occasion, they passed a burned-down house, or a field stripped of any good supply it might have carried. Only then did it seem possible that there was a war.

How quickly the land made up for the things that befell it! Daniel thought. For once they passed by such a place, the deep forests took over once again.

By nightfall, he moved into one of the forest trails, glad that he was in a place he knew so well. He was determined not to go into Williamsburg, but to skirt around it, and thus come home that way.

He jumped down from the wagon, and reached up for Callie. She hesitated, then set her hands upon his shoulders and allowed him to lift her down. He released her quickly, though, and reached for Kiernan.

“We’re staying here tonight?” Callie asked.

He nodded. “You two and Janey can sleep with the boys in the back. I’ll keep watch now. Try to get some sleep. I don’t know if I can stay up the whole night. If not, the two of you will have to stay up together. Can you do it?”