Triumph (51 page)

She should have come back from the hospital sooner, she thought. She suddenly felt a chill, as if the place really had become a ghost town, peopled with soldiers who had perished, who walked the streets wondering what might have come of their lives.

She was glad that Brent had left her an escort.

In the house she rushed into the room she had been using. It seemed so clean and neat and
normal
. She looked from the dressing screen to the hip tub and the bed with its soft, welcoming mattress. So much for luxury. Though she had spent her fair share of nights on the field, she’d had this place to come to as well. A haven for rest, for real baths with hot water, a place for clean clothes and the scent of rose soap, far from the smell of battle—and death.

She opened a brocade carpetbag on the bed and looked around quickly for the things she needed and wanted most. The soap, most definitely. Candles, matches, clean pantalettes, hose, and her freshly laundered blouses, tended by Mary’s servants, all gone now as well. How many had gone with Mary and Brent? she wondered.

And how many had fled to the coming Yanks?

She folded her stockings into the bag, then paused, feeling a strange sensation that she was being watched.

Turning toward the bedroom door, she froze. Taylor was there, blocking the doorway. As she stared at him, her mouth dry and a sense of fear invading her limbs, he tossed off his hat and walked into the room. He helped himself to the nearly empty brandy decanter on the occasional table, and walked over to the mantle.

“Hello, Mrs. Douglas. Were you leaving?”

She didn’t answer; she didn’t move. “What are you doing here?” she cross-queried him. “You were a prisoner at the farmhouse.”

“I felt I’d overstayed my welcome,” he said with a grin. “Apparently, my captors agreed and were shipping me out—to Andersonville. The place has acquired a nasty reputation, so I decided not to go. The prisoner exchange that Brent was promised never took place.”

“Did you escape from the farmhouse?”

“No. We were already en route. Ian and Jesse Halston—you know, he married Sydney—were coming to rescue me, but I’d already freed myself before they met up with me. Afterward, I had a chance to fill Jesse in on his wife’s foolhardy exploits.”

“How convenient,” Tia said flippantly, not wanting to accept the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat.
Taylor was back.

But what had happened to the Rebel soldier waiting for her at the fence? Was he watching the house, waiting to recapture Taylor?

“I missed you, Tia.”

“Well ...” she murmured, and she realized that what voice she had was husky and faint. “I was just leaving.”

“But now you’re staying,” he said flatly.

She shook her head, moistening her lips. “No, I’m leaving. I didn’t mean to be so rude and ungrateful when I saw you at the farmhouse, Taylor. I was trying to make you understand, I’m not what you want.”

“Oddly enough, at the moment, you’re exactly what I want.”

“Taylor, I’ve told you—”

“And I’ve told you. You made a commitment. You want out of it? Sorry, already done.”

“But I forced you into this. You can get a divorce.”

“Come here, Tia.” With purpose, he set his empty brandy glass on the mantle.

“Taylor ...”

She backed away from him uneasily, feeling his eyes. A fluttering began in her stomach. Just the way he looked at her ... she closed her eyes, gritting her teeth. Was she afraid of Taylor? She knew exactly what he intended. She didn’t think he cared at the moment whether she was particularly willing or not. She’d slapped him, ignored him—and had him brought down by an enemy with a gun at his head. And still ...

It wasn’t Taylor she feared. It was the way she felt inside, just when he looked at her like that. It was the hunger he awakened when she gazed at his hands, at the bronze of his long fingers. The yearning that swept through her like a storm when he came closer and closer, when she felt his warmth, breathed his scent ...

“Taylor, you haven’t paid the least bit of attention to me. I don’t want children. I’m sick of seeing them die. I won’t go through what I’ve watched parents go through.”

He caught her by the shoulders, forcing her to break off her words as he gave her a violent shake. “Shut up, Tia. We all play with what we’re dealt. Life is the game, and we play it out. Yes, there is loss, and yes, we endure. Can I tell you that you’ll never have a child die? That you won’t face more tragedy, even when the war is over? No, my love, there are no guarantees in life, none at all. But I’ll be damned if I’ll watch you risk your own fool life over and over again, and then turn into the worst kind of coward there is.”

“Taylor, don’t—”

“You’ll deal with life, Tia, and that’s the way it is.”

“But I don’t want this!” she cried, wrenching free from his hold, backing away again. “I don’t want you, I don’t want this! It was sheer accident, sheer stupidity, and I have said that I am deeply sorry, and deeply grateful, and I have given you your freedom.”

“But I have not given you yours!” he snapped angrily.

She turned, trying to escape him around the bed. His hand snaked out, caught her by the arm with a vengeance. He pulled her back, and she fell on the bed; She lay winded. He crawled over her—staring down at her—and shoved her carpetbag off the bed. “Want to slap me? Call for the Rebs?”

She didn’t answer him, but stared up at him hard.

He smiled. “Sorry—your Rebel escort isn’t coming for you.”

“What did you do to that poor soldier?”

“He’s alive, Tia, but he won’t be escorting you anywhere. There’s no one to call, my love. I believe the tables are turned.”

“Taylor, I ...”

He leaned low against her. “You what?”

“I ...” she began. “I don’t love you!” But as she said the words, she knew they were a lie. She had started falling in love with him when she’d first met him. He was different from anyone else in the world. His voice captivated her, his eyes compelled her, his touch, his whisper, aroused her. He was her enemy, but a man who would die for her. An enemy who fought for what he believed was right, who would give his life for his convictions, never back down, never falter. And she did want him, but she was so afraid of pain now ...

“Then we’re even,” he said softly. “Because I don’t love you. But damn you, Tia, I married you, and you are my wife, and you are not free. I
will
have you.”

That simply, he spoke the words. And that simply, he meant to have his way.

And she ...

He kissed her.

Again, a kiss filled with force, with hunger, with passion. As relentless as a tempest, his tongue forced entry, drank, demanded, delved, and seduced. She tried to twist against the surge of his force, but could not. Tried to fight the rage of feelings that surged within her breast, her blood, her limbs, but could not. Dusk turned to dark red, red to night, and all that remained were the shadows of the moon. He didn’t notice the bloodred coming of darkness. He kissed her, seized her lips again and again. Found the pulse point at her throat, touched her, stroked her cheek, her hair. Found the buttons on her bodice and swiftly unfastened them, chipping one delicate little piece of ivory in his haste to disrobe her.

Then he was everywhere ...

Her shoes were cast aside, skirt all but torn away, pantalettes nearly shredded, stockings—precious stockings—seized like autumn leaves in the winter wind. And surely she should be pushing him away, struggling against this onslaught, but it seemed that she was tugging off his clothing as well. His shirt was open, slipping from his shoulders. Her hands were on his bare flesh as his lips pressed against her shoulders, her throat, and then her breast. She could feel the fever of his body heat against her naked belly as he captured her breast with his kiss, tongue laving her nipple, teeth capturing the pebbled bud, mouth forming fully upon it, suckling, taunting, arousing, creating sensations that caused her to strain against him, protesting, arching, crying out. She was tearing at his hair, cradling his head as he moved against her. His body on hers, between hers, the force of his movement thrusting her thighs apart, his lips running wild and rampant over the bare expanse of her abdomen, lower, upon her upper thighs, between them, touching, demanding, arousing, allowing no quarter in the quest for pure seduction. And he did seduce. At last she realized that she didn’t fight, but clung. She didn’t struggle, but reached. And she wanted him. Wanted this. Hunger so sweet and erotic it was anguish. What he could do with his touch. His kiss, the brush of his whisper, the sweep of his tongue. And then ... the force of his body within her. A feeling of completeness, wholeness, part of him, still climbing—no,
soaring
—reaching to a sun that didn’t exist, a panoply of stars in the velvet of the night that had come. His eyes on her in the night, gold eyes, cat’s eyes, panther eyes, pinning her with the same surge of power as his touch, demanding, more so than the force of her touch, complete and unconditional surrender. She could not win the war.

She could hardly join in the battle, for it had been lost from the beginning, and it had never been the violence she had feared, but the knowledge that she hadn’t the will to fight. He had stripped her of her clothing, and her defenses, and she had not just accepted his greater strength, she had embraced her own weakness, wanting him.

Loving him, no matter what her words ...

Absence, anger, fear, tempest, perhaps they all added in as well. He moved against her with a strength that left her breathless, which seduced anew with every surge and eddy, which brought her flying ever higher, into the darkness, into the realm of lovers, where the world receded and only hunger and need existed. Then the darkness burst into white, blazing light; she closed her eyes and saw it still, and she shook and shuddered as sheer pleasure seized her in its sweet grip, and climax ripped into her with a searing ecstasy that defied the war, the day, the night, and all sanity and reason. His body heat melded into her own, and she was swept with the fire of his ejaculation, enwrapped in the warmth that encapsulated them both for the long, sweet moments as they flew, and drifted, and wound within one another, then came back to the reality of the earth and bed and their sweat-dampened bodies.

Tia lay silent, her heart pounding, in torment. It was frightening to want him this way, so frightening to realize how much she did care about him, what he meant to her, and who and what he was. She had straightened her world out—the best she possibly could in the melee her country had become—and he had come and twisted her inside out all over again. It had been so much easier when she had thought him safely locked away, when she had been able to turn to long hours with the injured who needed her so much that she wouldn’t have to think about the tempest of her own emotions. When she had convinced herself that she couldn’t want him, couldn’t have him, because she couldn’t bear the consequences. If only he had stayed away ...

“What now?” she asked him quietly after a long moment. “You are burdened with a Rebel bride you don’t love, who ... doesn’t love you, who costs you way too dear a price in everything you do. What now?” she challenged. She was going to cry. It was so ridiculous. She had to be stronger than this, not give way at every turn!

“Perhaps I should be grateful you don’t love me. Heaven help the man you do love; he would probably die from the ecstasy of your touch.”

“Taylor—” she began angrily, trying to roll away from him and rise.

But he caught her, firmly placing an arm around her. “What is the scale of your emotion? If I recall, you don’t
dislike
me. But then, that was what you said when you had promised to stay in St. Augustine.”

She was disturbed to hear her voice faltering. “I came to Richmond because my sister-in-law begged me to do so. I was trying to save a child. You can’t begin to understand—”

“But I did understand.”

“No, you really don’t. There was a little girl in St. Augustine, a carriage accident ...”

“And because she died, you refuse to have children.”

“Exactly,” she said harshly. “So ... what now?”

“What now?” he repeated, his voice soft and deep. “Well, now, as I said, the tables are turned.”

Her eyes widened.

“Are you having me arrested?”

“It’s a thought,” he said with a shrug. “However, I didn’t say that.”

“So I’m not to be your prisoner?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“Then what—”

“I said I’m not having you arrested. But neither will I let you out of my sight for sometime to come.”

“I’m to stay with you?”

“We’ll arrange something. Here, I’m definitely not in charge, as I was in Florida. Still, my rank is high enough.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll be close at all times. Damned close.”

She felt his fingers on her shoulders, knuckles running down her bare flesh.

“So ... you do not want children. They may die. And you do not love me, but lucky me, you do not dislike me. Who was it you might have loved? Our old friend from the blessed Florida militia, Colonel Weir? Do you believe you would have wanted children with him?”

“Weir ...” she murmured.
Weir?
She hadn’t even thought of the man in months.

“Yes, the good Rebel Raymond Weir. Well, if you think you wanted him, you really are a fool.”

“Oh, am I?”

He met her eyes, his fingers curling into the strands of her hair. “Yes, you are. He is the type of man who would have admired Godiva—and he would have wanted to sleep with her. But he never would have married her.”

“He is constantly asking me to marry him,” she replied defiantly.

“Because he doesn’t know you’re Godiva. He is a man who would think nothing of having a wife and a mistress, and the mistress should be a wild and decadent woman to serve his sexual fancies, while his wife must behave with complete dignity and modesty. Maybe he’d even allow you to wear volumes of clothing in bed. He would tell you what to do all the time—”

“Ah! And you don’t?”

“Do you think that he would marry you and allow you to work with Julian? I think not.”