One Wore Blue (55 page)

Christa worried that Kiernan might not be able to walk down the stairs, but Kiernan insisted on brushing her hair and donning a clean gown. She studied her reflection in the mirror, watching Christa’s secret smile as their eyes met in the glass.

She left the room and went to the portrait gallery. She smiled up at the handsome faces of the Cameron men and the beautiful faces of their women. “I really have come home!” she whispered. She smiled, and wondered if any of the Camerons past smiled in return.

Kiernan carefully descended the stairs. She was weak, she realized, and she would have to be very careful. But she was filled with a certain energy too. She had to see Jesse.

She passed the parlor and came to the door of the office and looked in. Jesse was indeed there, his feet up on the desk.

His head was back against the edge of the captain’s chair, and his eyes were closed. His white shirt was open at the collar. He had bathed during the night, and he was dressed in civilian trousers and a simple cotton shirt.

He was sound asleep.

She bit into her lip, thinking that she should leave him undisturbed.

He had to go back to the war, and he needed his sleep. He’d certainly had enough family crises to deal with.

But he was going to go away again.

And because of that she had to have this time with him.

She stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. As she did, his eyes opened. He frowned when he saw her. “Kiernan! What are you doing up?”

She walked over to the desk and discovered that she was suddenly shy.

After all of this, she thought.

All the years, and all their times together.

And now, the birth of their child.

She stopped in front of the desk. “Jesse, I had to see you.” Suddenly, she could say no more.

He stood, his boots falling hard on the floor. He walked quickly around the desk, sweeping her up into his arms. And he carried her back around with him, holding her tightly against himself as he took a seat in the captain’s chair once again.

“Did I thank you sufficiently for my son?” he asked her softly.

She nodded. “Oh, Jesse, did I thank you?”

He laughed. “The pleasure was all mine.”

She flushed, but laughed along with him. “Oh, Jesse!” She wanted to say more—there was so much to say. She set her fingers against the tight black curls where his shirt lay open against his chest. She whispered, “It all came out right! Daniel is home, and he looks wonderful. I know he’s going to be fine.”

This time, she thought. The war was still going on. But she was careful not to say it.

Like Jesse, Daniel would go back to it.

She refused to worry about it now. “My father is well, Jesse. And we’ve a son. He is small, but he seems so wonderful too.” She was suddenly speaking very quickly. “I’m even glad he’s a boy. Girls are wonderful children, too, of course, I’ve learned that with Patricia. Would you have minded a girl?”

“I’d have loved a little girl,” Jesse told her solemnly. “Except that I suppose I am pleased we had a son.” He smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “We’re still at war. I on my side, and Daniel on his. I’m pleased, for I know that my father would be glad, and his father. Since …”

His voice trailed away. “Since the Cameron name will go if you and Daniel are both killed?” Kiernan said, her voice breaking.

Jesse tightened his arms around her. “I love you so much, Kiernan. I’ve loved you for years. I’ve been thinking all night. I’ve always believed that I had to fight for what my conscience dictates to be right. But I love you so much, Kiernan, I’ll resign my commission. I can’t fight for the South, but we’ll go to England if you want, or maybe we could head west, or—”

She pressed her fingers against his lips. Tears came to her eyes and fell. “Jesse, you would do that? For me?”

He smiled, slowly, crookedly. “I would lay down my life, my heart, my soul—everything.”

She shook her head vehemently. “Oh, Jesse!”

“Can you love me, Kiernan? I am a Yank at heart, dressed in blue.”

“I do love you, Jesse, so much. And once it worried me, that I could love a Yankee so thoroughly, so desperately, so completely. But a friend told me something once. He said that I don’t love a Yankee, I love a man. And I do, Jesse, I love you. And the color that you wear can’t change the man that you are. I love that man.”

His lips found hers, and he kissed her. It was a long kiss, warm, flamed by passion, held in check by the depths of tenderness that overrode all else.

When he broke away from her, her eyes were dazzling upon his. She smiled. “I don’t want to go west, Jesse. And I don’t want to go to England.”

He frowned, his blue eyes very sharp, his raven dark hair disheveled upon his brow. She smiled, loving him so.

“Jesse, you’re a doctor, and a good one—no, you’re the very best. You save lives, you don’t take them. I know that you’d feel as if you’d betrayed your calling if you didn’t go back.”

“Kiernan—”

“I’m not changing sides, Jesse. No one can change their heart. The war will go on until someone wins it. And if you’re posted in Washington again, I’ll come there. I won’t spy ever again—I’ll promise you that. The other day, you asked me for a truce. A separate peace. And that’s what I want now, Jesse. A separate peace.”

He smiled, and once again he kissed her. He kissed her warmly and deeply. He kissed her with remarkable tenderness, and he kissed her so long that she grew dizzy, feeling a sweet delirium sweep over her. And at last his lips lifted from hers.

He stood up, holding her securely in the strength of his arms. Brilliant blue eyes blazed down into hers, and he smiled. “A separate peace, Mrs. Cameron, is so declared. Now, let’s go to see to young Master John Daniel Cameron.”

“John Daniel Cameron?” she queried.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

She leaned back in his arms, delighted, secure. “I love it,” she assured him, and she curled her arms around his neck. “Just as I love his father!”

Jesse smiled again, tenderly, then turned.

They left the office behind, and Jesse climbed the stairs with her in his arms. They passed by the watchful eyes of the Camerons in the portrait galley until they came to the master bedroom once again.

And there they doted upon the newest Cameron.

The cannons of war raged on, but Jesse and Kiernan had indeed found their separate peace.

July 4, 1863
Near Sharpsburg
Maryland

Beneath the light of a lowering sun, sometimes brilliant and sometimes soft, the woman at the well beside the whitewashed farmhouse seemed like a breath of beauty. Her hair, a deep rich auburn, caught the light. At times it shimmered a russet, and at times it was softer, deeper, like the warm sable coloring of a mink. It was long and free and cascaded around her shoulders like a fall, framing a face of near-perfect loveliness with its wide-set gray eyes, fine high cheekbones, full, generous, and beautifully shaped mouth. A hint of sorrow touched the curve of her lip and rose to haunt her eyes, but that very sorrow seemed to add to her haunted beauty, and against the day she surely did appear to be a reminder of all things that once were fine and beautiful, just like an angel, a small glimpse of heaven.

She was clean and fragrant, and though simply dressed, she seemed an incongruous bit of elegance as she stood and watched and waited while they came.

And come they did. Endlessly.

Like a long, slow, undulating snake, they came, hundreds of men, thousands of men, the butternut and gray of their tattered uniforms as dismal as the terrible miasma of defeat that seemed to hover about them. They came on horses, and they came on foot. They came with their endless wagon train that stretched, one weary soldier had told Callie, for nigh onto seventeen miles.

To Callie they were the enemy.

But that mattered little as she watched these men now, for she was surely in no danger from them.

There was only one Rebel who could frighten her, she thought fleetingly. Frighten her, excite her, and tear at her heart. And that Rebel would not be passing by. He could not be passing by, for he had not fought in the battle. The war had ended for him. He awaited its conclusion behind the walls and bars of Capital Prison.

If he were free, she thought, she would not be standing here by the well watching this dreadful retreat. If there had been any chance of his being among these wretches, she would have run far away long before now. She never would have dared stay here, offering cool sips of water to his defeated countrymen.

For now he would be an enemy she might well fear.

He would be the enemy because he would seek her out with cold fury, with a vengeance that had had endless nights to simmer and brew in the depths of his heart.

It was her fault that he lived behind those walls and bars and fences while his beloved South faced this defeat.

If he were free, it would not matter if she tried to run or tried to hide. He had told her that he would come for her and that there would be nowhere for her to run.

She shivered fiercely, her fingers tightening around the ladle she dipped into the deep bucket of sweet, cool well water for each of the poor wretches who strayed from the great wagon train to come her way.

He had sworn that he would come back for her. She could still hear his voice, the deep, shattering fury against what he thought had been her betrayal.

He could not come back, he could not! No matter what words of warning the women of each side tried to tell one another about the evils of enemy soldiers, Callie could not be afraid of these men. They were soldiers who worshiped the same God, a God both sides called upon in battle. They were sons and husbands and lovers and brothers, just like the boys in blue.

Even if these men marching by were the enemy, they brought nothing but pity to her heart. Their faces, young and old, handsome and homely, grimed with sweat and mud and blood, bore signs of exhaustion so deep it went far beyond anything physical. It showed in their eyes, like the mirrors of their souls, and what those mirrors held within them were anguish and misery and gut-wrenching loss.

They were retreating.

It was summer, and summer rain had come, turning the rich and fertile earth to mud. By afternoon the summer heat had lessened, a gentle breeze was stirring, and it seemed
absurd that these ragged and torn men, limping, clinging to one another, bandaged, bruised, bloody, and broken, could walk over earth so beautiful and green and splendid in its cloak of summer.

The great winding snakelike wagon train itself had not come so close to Callie’s farmhouse. Stragglers wandered by. Infantry troops mostly.

It was the Fourth of July, and on this particular Fourth of July, the people in the North were at long last jubilant. Over the last few days, around a sleepy little Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg, the Union forces had finally managed to give the Confederates a fair licking. Indeed, the great and invincible General Robert E. Lee, the southern commander who had earned a place in legend by running the Union troops into the ground in such places as Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, had invaded the North.

And he had been thrust back.

“It were over shoes, ma’am,” a Tennessee fellow had told her, gratefully accepting the dipper of cool water. He was a man of medium height and medium weight with thick dark hair on his head and a full, overgrown beard and mustache. He did not wear much of a uniform, just worn mustard-colored trousers and a bleached cotton shirt. His bedroll and few belongings were tied around his chest. His worn hat sported several bullet holes. “We were on our way to attack Harrisburg, but we needed shoes. Someone said there were shoes aplenty in Gettysburg, and first thing you know, on the first of July, there’s a skirmish. Strange. Then all the southern forces moved in from the North, and all the northern forces moved in from the South. And by nightfall on the third of July …” His voice trailed away. “I ain’t never seen so many dead men. Never.” He did not look at her but stared into the bottom of the ladle. His gaze seemed hopeless.

“Maybe it means that the war will be over soon,” Callie said softly.

He looked up at her again. Reaching out suddenly, he touched a stray wisp of her hair. She started, and he quickly apologized. “Sorry, ma’am. You standing here being so kind and all, I don’t mean no disrespect. It’s just that you’re nigh
unto one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and it’s making me think awfully hard of home. Your hair’s as soft as silk. Your face is an angel’s. And it’s just been so long.… Well, thank you, ma’am. I’ve got to keep on moving. Maybe I will get home soon enough.” He handed her the dipper and started walking again. He paused and looked back: “I don’t expect the war will be over any too soon. Your general in charge—Meade is his name these days, I think—he should have followed after us. He should have come now, while we’re hurt and wounded. Even an old wolf knows to go after a lame deer. But Meade ain’t following. Give our General Bobby Lee a chance, and he runs with it. No, the war ain’t going to end too soon. You take care, ma’am. You take great care.”

“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.