“Don’t be ridiculous, Janey,” Kiernan said firmly. “They don’t do horrible things to women in the North.” A tinge of unease swept through her. They didn’t, did they? She wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. She had to stand her ground.
“I wouldn’t count on that, Miz Kiernan!”
She and Janey were good friends, even if Janey’s status was that of a slave at the moment. Anthony’s will had freed her, but all kinds of paper work still had to be done to make her freedom a fact. It didn’t matter. Janey would never leave her. Not when they needed each other so very badly.
But for the moment, Kiernan raised her voice just slightly and used the tone she had learned all the long years back home. “Janey, I said to go in.”
Janey sniffed one more time and started into the house. “Dear Lord, give me strength! These old bones are too old to be trotting up into a snow-covered northern city to take care of the fool mistress in some jail!”
Janey paused in the doorway, sniffed once more for good measure, and started in. “Can’t see why I’m cooking no supper that no human body’s gonna get to sink teeth into! Supper’s gonna be char-broiled tonight, that it is!”
The door closed with a slam.
Kiernan stood still on the porch and felt the breeze move about her again, lift her hair, and rustle her skirt. The enemy was still coming.
Like the undulating wave of a deep-blue ocean—relentless, unstoppable, they came. And she waited still, silent, her heart pounding, her breath coming too quickly, despite her determination to appear calm.
The Yanks were coming to burn down her home. There would be no help—the deed would be done in retaliation for every rifle ever manufactured by the family into which she had married, the Millers.
She wondered why she was remaining. Why she didn’t just run. She couldn’t possibly stop them.
Then she knew that she was staying for her belief, for Virginia, for the Confederacy, and for herself, her soul. She couldn’t bend to the enemy, now or ever. She couldn’t run, and she couldn’t bend.
She watched the movement of the enemy troops. The first horses in front broke loose and came galloping up the rise upon which she stood. Her heart thundered. She didn’t move.
A moment later, a handsome bay was drawn up before her by a rugged-looking cavalryman with a dark moustache and beard that didn’t entirely hide his sneer.
“You must be Mrs. Miller, ma’am.”
“I am,” Kiernan said.
“Ma’am, I’m Captain Hugh Norris, and I reckon you’d best be out of the place right quick. I’ve orders to torch the house.”
“Whose orders?” she demanded.
“Why, the orders of General—”
“Your general has no jurisdiction here.”
“Ma’am, the Union is here. Your Confederates have left you. And I’m going to burn this place to the ground, so you’d best get your kin and help out of here. Lady, you ain’t smelt nothing bad until you’ve smelt burning flesh!”
Kiernan fought very hard to remain still, staring at the man, determined not to give in to his demand.
“Then you’ll just have to give me time, sir.”
“I’m torching her in ten minutes, Mrs. Miller.” He was gleeful. Obviously, his task appealed to him.
“I don’t know, sir. I think it would create an awfully bad image if it was found out that Union officers burned down houses with women and children still in them. You will just have to bide your time, sir.”
Norris stared at her in a fury. His bay pranced to and fro before the porch steps. Suddenly, he nudged the bay and brought it leaping up to the porch, very close to her. Kiernan raised her chin and didn’t take a step back despite the heavy hooves of the bay.
“Lady, let me tell you something. The day of the great southern high-brow belle is over. Real soon, you won’t dare be talking to a man like that! So take your time. I won’t burn you down. I’ll just drag you out. Then it’ll look like the darned Yank saved your hide despite your determination for suicide!”
“I think not, sir,” she told him. She was insane! What was she going to do? What could she do?
She needed to be rescued. She needed the whole southern cavalry under Jeb Stuart to come riding in. She needed a horseman, a hero in butternut and gray.
“Sergeant! Set some tinder!” Norris commanded.
One of his men leaped down from his horse. He called out in turn to several of the men, and they quickly joined him, collecting dried twigs and sticks and winding them with dried hay of their own to stuff into the latticed nooks and crannies at the base of the porch. Kiernan watched them, powerless to stop them, yet suddenly so furious, she wanted to tear into the men, to scratch their eyes out, to tear their hair out by the handfuls.
But she managed to stand still and silently, condemning, upon the porch.
“Damn you!” Norris thundered. Suddenly, he raced his horse down the steps and out before his men.
“Prepare to light your torches, men!” he called out.
Kiernan remained still even as they set fire to the torches.
“Prepare to fire the house!”
They couldn’t burn it with her standing there—she was determined! The men in blue looked at her nervously, then looked at their commander, then looked back to her again.
They started forward.
A cry bellowed out, loud, harsh, and full of authority.
“Halt!”
A rider was coming from behind the others, taking the path from the town in the valley below that the others had taken.
He rode with no discipline. He rode like one born and bred to sit upon a horse, with reckless, absolute ease upon his steed. He rode as if he knew the hills and mountains and valleys and more. He rode as if he knew the very muscle and heart of his mount.
The silver horse raced, churning up dirt and grass, and its rider was heedless of the speed. Distance was swiftly breached.
“Norris, halt!”
The order rang out with unmistakable authority, and at the sound of it, a faint recognition and unease stirred in Kiernan’s blood.
Captain Hugh Norris swore under his breath and rode down to meet the approaching rider.
A man who also wore blue.
Dark blue, deep dark blue, the blue of the Union Army. His uniform, too, was cavalry, trimmed in gold braid. His hat was blue, pulled low over his forehead and topped with a tall plume.
Not a hundred feet from the house, he drew up as Hugh Norris confronted him. And the new arrival produced a piece of paper beneath the captain’s nose.
An argument ensued, low-voiced, intense. The men with the burning torches waited uneasily. Countless gazes swept over Kiernan, and she realized that few of these men relished burning down a house.
Even those with eyes that mirrored the death that they had seen. They waited, as she waited.
Someone had come and halted the destruction of her house and of her world.
A Yank. A man in blue.
Not just any Yank, she was beginning to fear.
The two men broke apart.
“Douse your torches!” the new arrival ordered with his indomitable tone of command. He was instantly obeyed. The men thrust their burning torches to the ground.
The new arrival came riding up to the porch on his silver horse. He tilted back his plumed hat, and steel-blue eyes met hers.
The unease that had tinged the base of her spine now swept through her. Her heart skipped a beat, then slammed hard against the wall of her chest.
A Yank had come.…
Not just any Yank.
Jesse Cameron. The one Yank she had known most of her life. The Yank she despised the most. The one she had loved once upon a time. The one who now sent her heart and mind into a tumult.
It had been a long time since she had seen him. A long, long time since she had thrown her heart at his feet. Since he had ignored her every plea.
Since he had ridden north, wearing blue.
He hadn’t
changed.
Or maybe he had. His eyes were every bit as hard as ever, but they seemed to hold an even greater wisdom, a weariness; and a certain ruthlessness. Tiny new lines were etched around them. If anything, his jaw was more firmly set. He was clean shaven, baring the sharp planes and angles of his face. It was a rugged face, but handsome still, for its hard lines were tempered by the dark arches of his brow and the startling color of his eyes. It was given sensuality by the fullness of his mouth—a mouth that was grim and taut now as he stared at her.
“Hello, Kiernan.”
She didn’t want to admit that she knew him. No, she didn’t want to remember that she knew him. She didn’t want to remember the last time that she had seen him, and most of all, she despised the fact that she was seeing him now.
With him the victor for the moment, and she the enemy, her life and limb threatened.
She didn’t respond. He shrugged, but she was certain that his eyes glittered and that his temper was somewhat frayed. “Mrs. Miller, as of this moment, I’m taking over this property for use as my headquarters, for hospital and surgical space as is necessary, as of this moment. You will kindly inform your household.”
Kiernan gritted down hard on her teeth.
He had ridden in to save her home, she realized, to keep the manor from being burned to the ground. She had prayed for a hero in gray.
The house was being saved by a man in blue.
She’d rather eat dirt, she determined, lifting her chin.
“Captain Norris has plans to burn the place, Captain Cameron. I’m afraid you’ll have to seek your headquarters elsewhere.”
He stared hard at her. He dismounted from his horse and strode up the steps to the porch. He paused, just feet from her. He was tall, over six foot two, and broad-shouldered in his cavalry shirt and skirted cloak. He was dangerous. Jesse had always been dangerous.
As dangerous as the currents that now seemed to riddle the air with him so close—vital, electric. She felt a sudden heat, and it seemed to crackle on the breeze that swept between them.
Jesse could always bring about that kind of tension.
He spoke softly, so softly that his words couldn’t possibly carry to the other soldiers, who still formed a ring around the front of the house, watching them.
“I’m trying to save your home and your neck, Mrs. Miller,” he told her tensely.
“My neck hasn’t been threatened, Captain Cameron,” she snapped back.
“Keep talking, Mrs. Miller, and it will be!” he promised her. “Now shut up, and the manor can remain standing.”
“Will you really be taking it over?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d rather see it burn.”
“I’m sure you would, Kiernan. Common sense was never your strong suit. But what of young Jacob Miller and his sister?”
“Jacob wouldn’t want a Yankee turncoat like you living in the house, either, Captain Cameron.”
“You’d rather it burned?”
“Yes.”
He smiled at last and then started to laugh. He laughed so hard that she wanted to throw herself at him and hit him, despite their audience. He turned away and went down the steps.
Fear swept through her. Montemarte wasn’t actually hers—it belonged to Jacob and Patricia. She really had no right to recklessly bring about its destruction. But still, she couldn’t seem to swallow her pride.
“Captain Cameron!” she called to him sharply. He paused, his back stiff and straight. “Will you—will you burn it now?”
He turned back to her, setting his left foot on a step and leaning an elbow on his knee. “Well, Mrs. Miller, I probably should do just that. But I am sorry to disappoint you. I’m afraid that I can’t burn it now. I had to threaten and cajole and just about turn handstands to get the general to turn the place over to me. You see, Millers aren’t real popular among the Union men. Lots and lots of them have had friends and kin killed by Miller firearms. They’d like to see the total destruction of Miller property and Miller people.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult now, considering that the majority of the Millers are dead—thanks to the Union Army.”
“I assure you, several hundred Union men died the same—thanks to the Confederate Army.”
“They were on Virginia soil!”
He shrugged, and when he spoke again, he seemed to drop all pretense for the moment. “I didn’t start the war, Kiernan.”
“But we’re on opposite sides.”
“So fight me!” he warned her softly. “But I’m moving in, with my staff. Take your little charges and run to your own home. You’ll be safe enough there for a while. I probably won’t be able to salvage everything in the house, but at least I can keep it standing.”
“I don’t want any favors from you,” she said heatedly. “And I’ll be damned if I’ll run away from a passel of bad-mannered Yanks.”
His brow shot up with surprise. “You’re staying?”
She lifted her chin. “Stonewall Jackson will bring his army in here and wipe out the lot of you,” she promised. “I might as well wait for him to come. And keep your men from looting the house blind.”
“You haven’t been asked to stay, Mrs. Miller.”
“Are you planning on having your men throw me and the children out—bodily?”
“Heavens no, Mrs. Miller. It’s war, and I have managed to send men into battle. But I’m a merciful commander—I wouldn’t dream of sending them in after you.”
“Then I’m staying.”
“Maybe not. I didn’t say that I wouldn’t come in after you myself.”
“What a fine point of valor, Captain Cameron!” she drawled with dripping sarcasm.
“Go home, Kiernan,” he told her softly. She hated that tone of voice, hated the way that it washed over her so warmly. The way that it seemed to stroke her, inside and out, and bring back memories.
“This is my home now,” she reminded him. “And Jackson will come back. Or Lee will come back. Some southern general will come for this land again, and you will be routed.”
“That’s highly possible, Kiernan.” He stared at her and shrugged. “Fine. Stay. But I’m taking over the house. Be forewarned.”
“Forewarned, sir? I’ll be looking over your shoulder. I’ll be making sure that you treat Reb prisoners with the same care that you would give to your own injured.”
Fire flashed in his eyes, an absolute fury. She knew how to set a knife against Jesse’s spine because she knew Jesse. She knew his passion for medicine. Casting out the suggestion that he might treat Rebel prisoners with less than his full commitment was like a slap in the face.
But other than the flare of his eyes, he gave no hint of emotion. He arched a brow to her. As always, his control infuriated her.
He took a step closer, and his voice lowered to an even more dangerous tone. He was so near that she could breathe in the scent of him. He didn’t touch her, but still she felt his warmth and both the anger and the sensuality of his words. His words were a warning.
“I thought you’d run because of me, Mrs. Miller, like you did before. I won’t mind your being around. I’ll enjoy it. You’re the one who promised never to suffer life with a Yank, remember?”
“I won’t be suffering a life with you!” she snapped quickly. “I’ll be surviving in spite of you. I’ll fight you every step of the way. And the South will win.”
“Maybe the battles, but never the war,” he told her, and for a moment she wondered if they were speaking about the conflict of nations or the tumult that raged between them.
He stared at her for a several seconds. The wind ruffled her hair, and she was suddenly very cold. It was all she could do to keep from shivering as he stared at her with his steel and smoldering eyes.
“The Confederates will come back!” she vowed to him.
“They very well might,” he responded. For a moment, her will was locked within his gaze, within the heat and tension, riddled with it, shaking wit
h it. There was too much between them—too much hatred, too much passion, too many currents that sizzled and slashed like lightning. “But until your Rebs come back, Mrs. Miller,” he warned her, “it’s going to be share and share alike.”
He swept off his hat and bowed to her with mock gallantry. Then he turned and started back down the steps, calling orders to his men.
Kiernan spun around and tore into the house. Patricia caught her in the hallway.
“Are they going to burn the house down, Kiernan?” she asked anxiously.
“No! No!”
“Then what?” Jacob demanded, arriving in the foyer from the kitchen.
“They’re using it as a headquarters.”
“As a headquarters! As a plaice to plan how to kill more of our people?” Jacob asked.
Kiernan shook her head. How she hated Jesse! How she wished that he’d never come!
She’d prayed for a hero in gray. She’d prayed that the house could survive.
And the house had been saved—by an enemy in blue! An enemy she had known long and well.
“Captain Cameron is a—a doctor,” she said.
“Cameron!” Jacob said.
“Yes,” Kiernan answered. “It’s Jesse. Jesse stopped them from burning the place. But he’s taking it over.”
Jacob stared at her, then swung around in silence. She heard him leave by the rear of the house. Patricia stared at Kiernan a moment longer, then turned and raced after her brother.
Kiernan tore up the stairs.
The twins would have to tend to themselves for the moment. She needed time. She was desperate for time.
Jesse had come.
She threw open the door to her room and threw herself upon her bed, burying her face; in her pillow. She wanted to plot, to plan, to reason—but only one thought kept racing in her head. Jesse was here, Jesse was here.
She hated him so very much. And yet she had never stopped loving him. Even when she stood before an altar and swore to love, honor, and cherish another man, she had never stopped loving him.