“You’re leaving?” she said quickly.
“For the moment.”
“But what—” She paused, moistening her lips. He could see her pride battling with her absolute relief that he seemed about to let her be.
“You’ll do, Christa. But hell, I think I need a drink!” He turned and started for the door.
To his amazement, he was hit by a pillow. “Oh, you bastard!” she cried as he spun around. “This whole thing was just to torture me, to humiliate me, to strip me of my modesty—”
He walked back to her quickly, catching hold of her even as she shrieked, pulling her back up into his arms. “Christa, I can’t strip you of what you’ve already given up. You said you would have married the blue-belly who would have raped you, so don’t ask me to think too highly of your modesty. Maybe I did want to torment you.” And God alive! I tormented myself! he added silently. “But there’s more to it than that. You married me. You didn’t care to first find out what it would mean. Well, it’s done now. And you’re going to find out that it does mean something! But for the moment, good night!”
He set her down. She sank back to the bed, her eyes spitting fire.
But when he left her this time, she was silent. Hatefully silent. Even as he walked away, he could feel the fire in her eyes.
Just who had taken whom tonight, he wondered.
For Christa might well lie awake worried.
But he was suffering the tortures of the damned.
Four
Jeremy came down the stairway with tense, heavy footfalls, trying once again to ignore the numerous Camerons who seemed to be still staring at him from their frames with silent reproach. He didn’t want to see any more Camerons. The memory of Christa, naked and furious, seemed to be branded within his mind, and she was enough Cameron for him at the moment. He could still feel the sparks that had seemed to leap from her, like streaks of electricity. Christa in all her glory. All that magnificent black Cameron hair streaming down her back, every curve and nuance of her perfect young body.
Her eyes. Those blue fire-and-ice eyes. Revenge? Indeed, he’d had a taste of it. And it was sweet.
Then why was he the one so aflame now, the one suffering the pain of the damned? What a fool. How the hell could he want her so badly now? When there was nothing but hostility between them, after this travesty of a marriage, how could he have come to this position?
He reached the Camerons’ study and burst irritably into it, lighting the gas light above the desk and sinking into the chair behind that desk. He poured himself a brandy from the decanter on a side table, then leaned back in the chair, swallowing it down, wincing at the fire that seared his throat. He didn’t dare close his eyes, and he didn’t dare open them. He saw her either way.
Christa. Naked. Maybe emotions didn’t mean anything after so long a war, and so long a time since emotions had meant something. Maybe the wanting was just enough. Christa was perfect. Tall, slim, a little bit too thin, but not even the war could have taken too much a toll upon the natural dips and curves of her body. Her naked flesh was a beautiful ivory shade and it had the sweetest scent and the most inviting appeal.
He exhaled on a long groan.
He should have left her the hell alone.
He didn’t know what force or demon was driving him tonight, he knew only that she had goaded him to a point where she was going to pay a price for what she had forced upon them.
If Christa Cameron thought it was an easy thing to twist and bend people to her will at her convenience, he was damned sorry, but she was going to have to see that her actions had serious repercussions.
Marriage. It had come so easily to her. Just a slip off her tongue. No more than a trip into town, an afternoon’s escapade, easily done, easily forgotten.
In truth, she hadn’t cared. Hadn’t given a damn about his situation, just so long as she had gotten what she wanted, to protect the sacred halls of Cameron Hall.
Not that he resented having done something to salvage the place. Perhaps Christa had been right about one thing. The Hall was history. It was beautiful, gracious, a monument to centuries of a family that had found roots and flourished in a new world. Now Cameron Hall had weathered revolution and civil war, and all the trauma in between. It deserved to stand. He could understand her desire to save it, even if he was infuriated by the way she was willing to use him to do so.
Although he had fought all the long years of the war, although there had been times when he had watched his men fall and die and in his heart he had hated all things Rebel, he was disgusted with the way things were being handled in the South. Power was being put into careless hands. Lincoln had wanted peace. But Lincoln was dead, and Johnson’s administration was determined not on peace but on punishment. Elections were being rigged, and half the men who had been in politics before the war—those who were still living—were being barred from office for having served with the Confederacy. Daniel Cameron had yet to receive a pardon from the United States government because of his high rank in the military service, and as things stood now, some men wondered if Jeff Davis might yet meet a hangman. But beyond the blatant abuses of power, there were smaller struggles going on. Officials—many of them opportunists who had come down upon the South like locusts—were taking all manner of bribes, selling out to the highest bidders. Such had been the case with Cameron Hall.
Jeremy liked his brother-in-law, Daniel Cameron, just fine. Daniel had been a Virginian born and raised, and there hadn’t been a lot of help for the fact that he’d been a Reb. He’d just followed his own conscience. The war hadn’t given them a lot of time to deepen their acquaintance, but from what they’d come to know of one another, they shared a common way of looking at the world, at responsibility, at life. And Jeremy’s sister, Callie, loved Daniel. That said a lot for him, right there.
Jeremy was glad to have done anything that might have helped Daniel.
He lifted his brandy glass. “To you, Daniel!” The first time he had come here, looking for Callie, he had wound up in this room, drinking brandy with Daniel Cameron. It had been a strange day. He had come here ready to do battle for his sister’s sake. He had come here an enemy. He had left here his brother-in-law’s friend, even if neither of them had changed his colors.
Then there was Jesse Cameron. He’d had several occasions to get to know Jesse—they’d fought on the same side. Jesse was the finest physician and surgeon he’d ever come across. The war had taken a hell of a toll on him as he’d patched up his friends and old acquaintances—from both sides of the fighting field. In the regular cavalry, Jeremy had ridden in by the hospital tents often enough to see his sister-in-law’s elbow deep in the wounded, that anguished look on her face that Jeremy could read too clearly.
Jesse Cameron was always afraid that someone would be bringing his brother in to him.
But the war had ended. Jesse and Daniel had both managed to stay alive.
Jeremy liked them both. It didn’t matter which side they had fought on, he had no problem with the Cameron men.
It was the Cameron woman he longed to throttle.
Christa!
Damn her. Men knew how to fight, and they knew how to surrender. For Christa, the war would never be over.
Nor, he thought soberly, would she ever realize that she wasn’t the only one to feel that she had lost a love, lost everything, in the carnage. For a moment the pain returned to him, though he thought that he had learned to suppress it a long, long time ago. It returned, harsh, brutal, tearing into his heart.
It had been one thing to see soldiers die. That had been anguish enough. But sometimes fire went awry. Sometimes cannonballs tore up far more than fortress walls or other cannons or fighting men …
Sometimes fire killed the innocent. Old men, children.
Women, trying to shelter little ones.
He grit his teeth. Jennifer Morgan had been killed during the long, awful shelling of Vicksburg, Mississippi. It had been over two years ago now. He co
uld still remember how he had found her when the ragged, bone-thin little blockade-running urchin had brought him to her when the city had fallen into Yankee hands. She’d been in the caves beneath the hills. They’d folded her hands over her breast, and she might have been sleeping except for the clot of blood he found at the base of her skull when he’d tried to move her.
Jenny. He hadn’t known her a year. He had first met her when his troops had encamped on her farmland and he’d gone to make what restitution he could for the destruction that his men were causing with their tents and multitude of horses. He had expected a haggard farm wife, but that wasn’t what he had discovered at all. Jenny had been beautiful. Blond, green-eyed, delicate, and lovely. So very proud, but so sweet and soft-spoken. Three little children had clung to her skirts, and all were threadbare and thin-looking.
Jeremy hadn’t just paid for the damage to her crops. He managed to pay her a small fortune for a broach she had. He was going home, and he had needed a gift for Callie.
Callie would take good care of the gift. And with his Yankee dollars, the widowed Mrs. Jenny Morgan—whose husband had been killed at Shiloh—would be able to buy food and clothing for her growing young brood.
Christmas had come and gone.
Jeremy had come back to Mississippi. He’d remained on her land while Grant determined to dig in until Vicksburg fell, no matter what the cost. Grant was the one damned smart general the Union had. He didn’t retreat every time a southern force came near him. He knew that he had more of one important thing than any southern general out there—manpower. The Rebs couldn’t afford to keep dying. The Union could keep replenishing her fallen forces.
But the war hadn’t really mattered between them. They had never been at war with one another.
He didn’t know when he had fallen in love with her. Maybe it had been one of those nights when he had stared at her windows so long he hadn’t been able to take it anymore. He had mounted up and ridden over, and he had discovered that Jenny Morgan waited up nights for him. The hours of darkness became magic.
Jenny didn’t have much interest in politics. But she had been born a Mississippian and she cared deeply about what was happening to the people around her. Jeremy never knew that she intended to go into Vicksburg along with her children despite his words of warning while the Union continued its siege of the city. She could help with the soldiers in the hospital.
Jeremy explained the futility of her wishes, and she listened to him. While war pounded on around them, they formed a curious domesticity. The children loved him, and loved to pick his pockets when he came. Jeremy and she were on different sides of the upheaval, but Jenny, though she wouldn’t say the words, didn’t believe that the Confederacy could win the war.
Jeremy was ordered to take his company on a reconnaissance ride around the perimeters of Vicksburg. As it happened, the maneuver took them days. When he returned, Jenny was gone, leaving behind a note that she loved him and that she’d marry him as soon as the siege at Vicksburg was over. She was expecting their child in autumn.
When she was gone, he realized just how much he loved her. He tried to get word into the city to make sure she was all right. There were Union spies moving in and out, so it wasn’t very difficult to discover her whereabouts. She was with many other citizens of the city, living in caves below the hills because so many of the houses had been hit with cannon and shell fire. The caves were the only place to avoid fire.
It was a terrible ordeal for the citizens of Vicksburg. The Union spies who returned shook their heads wearily at his questions. There was no food to be had in the city. Those who remained were cooking the rats that scurried among the refuse.
His heart sickened and he wrote her a long letter, begging her to come out. Yes, he wanted her. Yes, he loved her. He wanted their child, and he wanted to be a father to her other children. He didn’t want her in Vicksburg. She needed to take the children, marry him, and find somewhere to live safely.
Somewhere where neither army came.
Days passed. A spy brought a letter back to him. He was grateful. He knew the man had put his life at risk. The letter was filled with Jenny’s words, with her enthusiasm and empathy for all men, with all the beautiful things that had made him fall so completely in love with her.
She was unique. He hadn’t lived so very long—he’d just turned twenty-four at the start of the war—but he’d put some mileage into those years. He came from a family of hardworking farmers. They were not rich but his father had earned a wealth of friendship and respect in his dealings, and he’d seen to it that all his sons had gone to West Point.
Once he’d graduated, he’d served some time in the West, riding hard on the Santa Fe Trail. He’d seen some action, enough to test his mettle under fire. He’d been initiated into battle fighting Indians, and he’d come to know a fair amount about a number of the tribes, from the civilized and fascinatingly cultured to the very savage and warlike.
He’d seen some other action in the West with the camp ladies who managed to trail behind any army. He’d even been growing serious about the daughter of an army major, but something had been lacking and so he’d backed away.
Once he realized just how deeply he cared for Jenny, he learned what had been missing. Love. She was, indeed, unique. Sweet and dignified. And strong, too, he realized. She pretended to bow to him in all things, then she went her own way.
She would not come out of Vicksburg. She had learned how to meet one of the blockade runners on the river, and she was determined to be of help to the citizens in the city. She could bring in food and morphine for the children.
She had been dead a long time now.
He had come in the very day the city had fallen. He had watched the women weeping in the streets as the blue-clad forces had marched through. He had felt the southerners’ hatred.
He had ignored them all, demanding directions to the caves.
He had found her. She had been struck by a stray bullet just two nights before the surrender of the city.
She had died within twenty-four hours.
No one in the cave had said anything about his blue uniform. Maybe his grief had been that naked. Jenny’s beautiful blond children had offered him more comfort than he had offered them. He had taken her into his arms, held her dead body. He had laid his palm over her belly, where their child had died with her. He had not wanted to give her up.
A woman like Jenny had stood in the entry to the makeshift home in the cliffs. He had looked up, his eyes glittering with his pain. “I can take the children. I’ll adopt them if they’ll have me, I’ll find some place—”
“Sir, Vicksburg will be safe enough now,” the woman said. “We’ve surrendered. The children will be safe with me. I’m Jenny’s sister, and I’ve lost my husband and my only boy.”
He could remember nodding. He could remember stumbling to his feet, still holding Jenny’s body.
“She did love you,” the woman told him. “And she knew that you loved her. She was happy about the new one, and it didn’t give her any mind whatsoever that it was a Yank fathered her babe, she loved you that much. You put her down now. We’ve got to bury her.”
Jenny was buried; Vicksburg was secured. Jeremy was transferred back to the East, whether he wanted to fight there or not. Grant was determined to trap the wily Lee, and it didn’t matter what it took. He would lose battles, and he would lose men. He’d fight again, and he’d draft more men.
There was one benefit to being assigned back to the East. He’d have a chance to see Callie. He had been so angry with Callie when he’d first discovered she was about to have a Reb’s child, and she was not married to that Reb. He might well have fathered a southern child himself. It opened a wealth of understanding. He had been so anxious to see her.
But he discovered that Callie had been spirited down south by that Reb and so he had come to Cameron Hall for the first time. He had come to know Daniel and Christa. The beautiful blue-eyed witch upstairs. The one wh
o had married him, condemning him, hating him.
“To you, Christa!” he murmured, swallowing down another two-finger swig of brandy. He was certain she had sat at this very desk often enough, sipping brandy—or swigging it down—just as he was now. It was a fine old office with the massive desk and rows of books. The ledgers and all the books were kept here. And once, Jeremy was certain, gentlemen would have retired here in the midst of a party for brandy or whiskey and cigars and talk. Politics. Animal husbandry. Things in which the women wouldn’t be interested.
Until the war had taken away the men and left the women.
For a moment, a heartbeat of pity slipped its way into his heart. She had managed well enough. She had a right to love the place. Working like a field hand, she had kept it standing. And she had fought for it. When Eric Dabney’s Yankee raiders—out to bring Daniel in dead or alive—had come sneaking around the place, Christa had been armed and ready. She had shot a man in defense of herself and Kiernan and Callie. She hadn’t killed him, but she hadn’t hesitated to pull the trigger when she had been threatened. She was a fighter.
Pity. Because she was going to lose the place. The house belonged to Jesse.
He smiled suddenly. He should make her come west with him. She was a fighter; she had magnificent courage.
And she was beautiful. And desirable.
He set his glass down, sobering. The western plains were really no place for a woman, any woman. Some of the men did bring their wives, but those wives loved their husbands.
The West was wild, primitive, dangerous, savage. Then again, Christa was all those things too! Heaven help the Indians she got her hands on.
Somewhere in the house, a clock struck. He counted the chimes. Midnight.
It was his wedding night. He had imagined it so differently. He’d imagined laughter and caring, and making love deep into the night. He’d imagined sleeping with golden blond streams of hair tangled all over his naked flesh. He’d imagined her smile and her welcome, touching her stomach to feel their child grow.