A few minutes later she was startled by a firm hand upon her arm, and she was swept into Jesse’s arms. His eyes flashed a dangerous, wicked blue, as hot as they had ever been. They stared arrogantly into her own.
“What now, Miss Mackay? Another conquest? Is it not enough that young Mr. Miller must trip over his tongue every time you are near? Would you have another young man panting on the whisper of a promise? Or have you taken love up as sport?”
Her hand went rigid, and she would have slapped him. But his hold upon her was tight, and his words were quick and harsh. “No, no, careful, love! Imagine, what would they all think if you suddenly slapped your host upon the dance floor? Your father would be aghast—I would be forced to tell him the truth about our relationship. Anthony would be horrified and honor-bound to come to your rescue to salvage your honor. He would be forced to challenge me. And in the duel I’d have to try damned hard to stay alive and at the same time manage not to kill the poor young fool. Is that what you want, Kiernan? The two of us—or three or more of us—fighting over you?”
She still wanted to strike him. But more than anything, she wanted to cry. She lowered her eyes and shook her head. “No. No, that’s not what I want.” She looked up at him again, her eyes damp. “What I want is you, Jesse.”
He smiled, a slow, somewhat painful grin that curled his lip in self-mockery. “But you have had me, Kiernan. And you have me still.”
They whirled around the dance floor once again. Kiernan knew where he was taking her. They whirled to the open doorways and then beyond. He slipped off his handsome frock coat to set it about her shoulders as they moved down the porch. They could hear the sounds of laughter and singing from the slave quarters. Delicious aromas wafted on the air from the smokehouse and the kitchen and the bakehouse. That sweet smell that was Christmas was on the air, a smell of cinnamon, cloves, bayberry, holly, mulling wine, rum, and fruitcake, and so many other special scents.
Kiernan felt as if she were going to cry again. She lifted her arms and encompassed the scene, the porch, the winter garden, the lawn sweeping down to the river, the stables and other appendixes to the beautiful estate, the graveyard with its long history. “This!” she whispered. “This is what I want.”
He smiled, sitting up atop a latticed railing at the far end of the porch and drawing her close. “This? The hall? You could have married Daniel long ago for this.”
She blushed. “No, I don’t mean the hall, although I do love it.” She turned to him very seriously. “Jesse, I want you. And I want the life that we have always led. I want the river, and I want the land, and I want years of Christmases just like this one. I want the elegance—”
“You know how much work a plantation is!” he reminded her sharply.
Yes, she did know. It was dawn-to-dusk work, no matter how many slaves a man or woman owned. It was constant supervision of a massive household. The laundry, candles, beeswax, baking, sewing, cleaning, buying, harvesting, and always listening to problems, solving them, and starting all over again. But Kiernan had never minded. She had been her father’s hostess since she was a child, and she had learned so very much that way.
And all the work was for moments like these, moments when she could look out upon the river.
“I want this,” she murmured. “I want you and me and this. I want to grow old throwing such parties, and sitting upon this porch. And watching my grandchildren tumble down the lawn. I want to be buried in that little graveyard, with a headstone that says Cameron.”
“Then marry me,” Jesse interrupted. “If I can promise you nothing else, I think I could see to it that you are interred in that plot with a Cameron headstone.”
She pulled away from him and glanced at him sharply. “You’re laughing at me, Jesse.”
“No,” he told her softly, “I am not.”
His eyes were dark, a dusky blue. He watched her with a combination of tenderness and warmth. For a moment, she thought that they shared everything. He understood exactly how she felt. He loved the things that she loved and he loved her.
Maybe it was just the moment itself that they shared. But she felt compelled to move closer to him and to watch him with growing wonder as he bent down and just touched her lips with his own, lightly, gently, oh, so tenderly, so sweetly.
They broke away, watching each other.
It was then that she heard the sharp sound of a man clearing his throat. Jesse looked up over her head, and Kiernan spun around with dread.
It was her father. A blush suffused her cheeks, and she wondered what he had seen.
He had seen enough. He was staring hard at Jesse.
“Kiernan, get in the house,” John Mackay advised her firmly.
“Papa—” she began to protest.
“Kiernan, your father asked you to go inside,” Jesse reminded her firmly, his eyes upon John.
She had never been in terror of her father. She loved him, loved him dearly. He had always been a good, giving, and even tender parent. They were, after all, all the family that each other had. But his eyes, which were usually such a soft and gentle blue, were now as hard as steel. She wanted to protest, but she looked from him to Jesse and back to him, then to Jesse once again. Neither seemed to be paying her any heed.
“Papa, Jesse—”
They both turned on her. Their words were unanimous. “Go inside, Kiernan.”
Trembling and furious that both would order her about so, she gritted her teeth, inched her chin up, and headed for the doors, decrying her sex.
But she paused just inside the doors and tried to listen to their words, her heart seeming to spin within her chest.
She heard Jesse’s voice first, assuring John that his intentions were entirely honorable. He had, in fact, asked Kiernan to marry him. As yet, she had not agreed, and that was why Jesse had not yet come to John.
Her father was curiously silent.
“Mr. Mackay,” Jesse began again. “I assure you—”
“I know, Jesse, I know. You have grown up honorable, and five years ago I would have welcomed your suit. I would have deplored my daughter’s handling of young Miller. I cannot fault her behavior now, for she has refused an engagement with him. But I have to tell you, Jesse, that if you came to me now, I could not give you my blessing.”
Kiernan could not see Jesse, but she knew that he was stiffening, that he was standing very tall, that his backbone was rigid, that his temper was held in check out of respect for her father.
“You won’t be here much longer, will you?” her father asked softly.
Jesse was very quiet. “I don’t know, Mr. Mackay.”
“It will depend which way the wind blows, won’t it?” John asked him.
Again, Jesse was quiet.
“Perhaps you should stay away from her until we know,” John suggested.
“That will be difficult, sir,” Jesse said.
“And why is that?”
“Because I love her, you see.”
“Indeed,” John said quietly. “Then, sir, I must ask you for prudence. Let things go on as they have been. We’ll watch the wind.”
“All right, Mr. Mackay,” Jesse agreed. “We’ll watch the wind.”
Kiernan was still at the doorway when her father came bursting back through it. He stared at her, and his shaggy brow went flying up. “Hmpf!” he exclaimed. “I should have suspected you were there!”
She looked anxiously to the porch, but her father caught her arm and pulled her back into the hallway and into the dance in progress. “I should have kept you in Europe a bit longer, eh, daughter? I’ve been warned that a beautiful woman is trouble, and trouble you’re proving to be!”
“Papa!” she wailed.
He winked at her, softening his words. But when the music died, he said, “Bid Christa and Daniel and Jesse goodbye. And be especially polite to young Anthony—his father and I are business partners. Then we’ll be going.”
“But it’s early!”
“I have a f
eeling that it’s already too late,” John Mackay said with a weary sigh. “You’ll do as you’re told this once, daughter. Now I mean it—run along.”
Much as she was unaccustomed to his giving her orders, she knew that he meant his words. The party had barely begun, but it did not matter—they would leave.
She hugged and kissed Daniel, fought for regal control as she said good-bye and thank you to Jesse, and was as demure and charming as her father could have wanted when she bade good night to Anthony. She would see them all again, soon, she knew. Her lather would hold a twelfth-night dinner at their home.
But she was suddenly very much afraid. It was one thing to hold Jesse off by her own desire and determination. But now that her father was involved …
Her father had seen the sanie torment in Jesse that she knew he had about the political situation that faced them all.
She loved Jesse. But was her love stronger than whatever might happen in the country? Could she ever really be Jesse’s enemy?
Yes, she could, she thought, and was more bitter because of that love.
Yet she could not believe that when the time was really upon them, that Jesse could leave his home—that he could leave her—because of a misguided disagreement with Virginia’s political stance.
She did not want him to be torn away from her. She wanted to hold him, to hold him as tightly as she could.
And so before she left, she found Christa. She dared to take her friend, Jesse’s sister, into her confidence.
“Christa, please ask Jesse to meet me at the summer cottage tomorrow, at dusk.”
Christa’s eyes grew large and wide. “All right, Kiernan.”
“And please—”
“I won’t say anything to anyone else, Kiernan. I promise.”
Kiernan smiled. The two girls hugged one another, then Kiernan hurried out, not wanting to risk her father’s temper.
In the carriage, John Mackay stared at her. “So it’s been Jesse Cameron all along, has it?”
“Yes, Papa,” she said primly.
“You love him, huh?”
“Yes!”
“Do you love him enough?”
“Enough?” She flushed, and suddenly she found herself defending Jesse’s position. “Virginia has not seceded, sir. We are not at war.”
Her father wagged a finger at her. “You listen to me, missy. Virginia will secede, and there will be a war. Jesse knows that. That’s the only reason he hasn’t pressed you. If he weren’t the man that he is, if he didn’t love you enough to know your own heart better than you do yourself, he would have been at my door long ago. You mark my words, young lady, guard your heart.”
She’d guard her heart, all right.
But she would still meet him at the summer cottage tomorrow. She had a Christmas gift for him.
He arrived at the cottage at exactly noon and saw that Kiernan had come before him, for a fire had been lit. He could see the smoke drifting softly from the chimney. He smiled. She wouldn’t worry about the smoke attracting attention. She knew he came here often, and that his family respected his privacy.
He entered, and for a moment he blinked, trying to adjust to the dim light in the room. All that gave it luminescence was the fire that played in the grate. The room was bathed in a very pale glow of gold, otherwise touched in shadow.
And then he saw her.
She was only a few feet away from the fire, upon the floor. But the floor was not bare—it was covered in fur.
And like the floor, she was covered in fur. A beautiful white fox was draped over the length of her. Her hair, loose and free and set to shine like fire from the glow of the blaze, rippled and waved over the fur.
Then, as he stood, she let the fur fall. She was naked, naked in the achingly soft and sensual pool of the fur.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered. Her emerald eyes were green in the glow, the eyes of a cat, mysterious, haunting, compelling.
He paused—God in heaven, he didn’t know how he did so, but he did—and allowed his eyes to rake over her, to relish and savor, to savage and adore the woman that he thought he knew so well. He knew the sweet scent of that glorious golden hair, knew its feel between his fingers. He knew those eyes, the elegant shape of her face. He knew the taste of her flesh, the curve of her hip, the fullness of her breast. He knew the length and shape of her thighs, knew the musky sweet secret femininity between her legs. He knew so very much about her … but not as much as he thought he knew.
She rose. She seemed to glide from the elegant cocoon of fur, like Venus sweeping from Poseidon’s shell. She stood before him, sensual, exciting, sweeping his breath away. The boldness to her movement was belied by the sudden shyness in her eyes, by their uncertainty as her gaze met his.
A soft, tender question curved her lips, lips that were full, shapely, moist, waiting to be kissed.
She stretched her arms out to him, wanting him, arms soft and creamy, heightened the beauty of her breasts as they rose. Alabaster, touched by the tiny blue lines of veins, crested by nipples as rouge as a rose in winter. His eyes swept lower still, taking in the golden nest at her thighs, the curve of her hip.
A cry, ragged, hoarse, tore from his lips, and she was within his arms. He tore his clothes from his body, and soon he was next to her before the fire.
Upon their knees, they met one another. The fire glowed over their bodies, making his shoulders sleek, making the curves of her body, her breasts, her hips gleam. Their fingers met and meshed, and then their lips caressed and parted and caressed again.
Soon their bodies were dampened and slickened by the torrents of kisses and caresses that they shared and exchanged. The fire glowed upon them still.
It glowed until he pressed her back upon the fur and sank hard within her.
The winter’s cold became summer with its heat.
After the blaze had swept through, the fire still played within the grate, and the glow remained to warm them.
Mississippi seceded from the Union on January 9, Florida seceded on the tenth, and Alabama on the eleventh.
The four states needed only Georgia for the seceded territory to stretch from North Carolina’s southern border to the Mississippi.
Joseph E. Brown, Georgia’s strongly secessionist governor, asked his legislature to call for a convention. Speeches were made by visitors from the already-seceded states.
On January 19, Georgia became the fifth state to secede from the Union. Louisiana seceded on the twenty-sixth, and Texas on February 1.
By the end of the month, Jesse and Daniel had both ridden back to join their units. Virginia had made no move to leave the Union.
Her legislature had suggested that a convention be held in Washington, at the Willard Hotel, in the hope of preventing war. It convened on February 4 and was known as the Washington Peace Convention.
But delegates from the lower South were conspicuously absent. On the same day, they were holding their own convention in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a new government, a Confederacy of seceded states.
So while peace was discussed in the North, the Confederacy was becoming a reality. The Confederate delegates rushed to perform important tasks to solidify their own union before Abraham Lincoln could take office. In Montgomery, Jefferson Davis—once President Buchanan’s secretary of war, the man in charge of that department when John Brown had raided Harpers Ferry—was elected to the highest office of the new Confederacy.
The Confederate Constitution was ratified. The “stars and bars” was adopted as the flag. An army was authorized. The laws of the United States were also adopted, with exceptions regarding states’ rights and the instituion of slavery. The Mississippi River was declared open for navigation, Texas was admitted to the Confederacy. The provisional government authorized loans, contracts, and treasury notes—and prepared for war.
Much of this went on while the Washington Peace Convention was still playing with hope at the Willard Hotel.
At home, Kiernan waited, wishin
g desperately that she could be where all the action was taking place. She read every newspaper she could get her hands on, and she waited.
Virginia remained steady for the moment, and both Cameron brothers remained with their regiments. Kiernan heard frequently from Daniel, who was eager to explain his position. “My heart lies with this new Confederacy,” he wrote, “with the states and the people with whom we have so very much in common. I think that I am a southerner, a Confederate—a Rebel, if you will! But first and foremost, I am a Virginian, and I will abide by the will of the state I love so dearly. Actually,” he went on to admit, “I believe that I have stolen that sentiment from Colonel Lee, but then, you know how we both admire him, and he expresses what we feel.” The letter rambled on. It ended with a postscript. “Jesse sends his love.”
His love—and his silence, Kiernan thought.
Throughout the South, major events were taking place.
In Florida, warlike actions had begun even before the state had seceded. Militia had been trained. In Pensacola, Federal troops had been forced off the mainland forts of McRee and Barrancas to Fort Pickens in the harbor. Fort Marion at St. Augustine had been seized, and Alabama and Florida troops had taken over the navy yard at Pensacola. Southern military leaders wanted to attack Fort Pickens, but they also wanted to avert war, and so they waited.
Similar events were taking place throughout the Confederacy. In South Carolina, Brigadier General Pierre Beauregard watched the Union troops at Fort Sumter and feared that Washington would send reinforcements.
Everywhere, the tension increased.
And still Kiernan waited. Anthony no longer plagued her with his constant, patient proposals, for he had hurried home. He had left his position with his local militia, for many of its members were pro-Union, as were many of the western counties of the state. Politically, Anthony was everything that Kiernan longed for Jesse to be—passionately, loyally, unshakably sympathetic to their cotton and tobacco neighbors.