Authors: Heather Graham
No, no, God, let the war end! she prayed fervently.
She heard the sound of a wagon. A sizzle of fear ripped through her, and she jumped up, holding Jared tightly to her.
She looked down from the window and breathed a sigh of relief as she saw that the wagon below carried Rudy and Helga Weiss.
“Callie!” Rudy called to her, standing up in the wagon.
She looked out of the window. “Hello! I’m here.”
“Thank the Lord!” Helga muttered.
Curiously, Callie watched as Rudy helped his wife from the wagon. She hurried down the stairs, the baby still in her arms.
She met the two of them at the back door. Helga burst in, sweeping the baby from her arms, and murmuring to him in soft German. Callie looked at Rudy, her brows lifted.
“You are all right? You haven’t been disturbed?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Rudy sighed and sank into a kitchen chair, mopping his brow.
“They came through our place, they did.”
“Who?”
Rudy grimaced. “First a Confederate major. He left us a wad of his Confederate money, and took almost everything that moved on the property, goats, chicken, cows. Then, not long after, another soldier comes by. This one is all dressed up in a blue uniform. He lays another wad of money on the table, and cleans us out of everything that the Rebels forgot to take!”
“Oh, Rudy!” Callie murmured. She sat down across from him. “Did they take your grain and everything else too?”
“Everything.”
“Well, then, you must help yourselves to what I have here.”
“Nein, nein! We did not come to take from you—we came to be certain that you were all right. Our people need very little, and we look after one another.”
“But I don’t need all that I have. You would help me if you took some of the animals.”
“Perhaps the armies will still stumble upon you,” Rudy said wearily.
“Then they might as well stumble upon me with half of what I have, right?” she said cheerfully.
Rudy argued, Helga argued. But before she would allow them to leave, she had a goat tied to their wagon and a dozen chickens within it, along with several sacks of grain and numerous jars of her preserves and pickled vegetables.
A few days later, Rudy was back.
“Callie, you must be careful. Come home with me.”
“Why?”
“The battle has been fought. A big, horrible battle. They say that between both sides, near fifty thousand men were killed or injured.”
“Oh, my God!” Callie gasped.
“They are coming home. The Rebs are coming home. They will come limping and worn and hurt. And many will pass by here. Come home with me.”
Callie shook her head. She felt an awful dread, and an awful anticipation.
Her heart was beating too hard once again.
He couldn’t be among them. He was in prison. Thank God, she had really done something good. She had kept him from the horror, from the death, from the blood.
He would never see it that way.
“Callie, come with me!”
She shook her head, feeling an awful fascination. Pity filled her heart, and the startling certainty that she had to stay. She had to offer them water on their long journey homeward, if nothing more.
Perhaps there would be someone who knew him.
Someone who could tell her that he was still in Washington, that he lived, that he was well.
She shook off the awful shivers that seized her. “Rudy, I cannot come. I must stay here.”
“Callie.”
She didn’t understand it herself. “I must stay, Rudy. I—I simply must. Maybe I can help. Maybe I can do something.”
Rudy shook his head. “These men … these men are the enemy.”
“A beaten enemy.”
“This war is not over.”
“I will be all right, Rudy. I need to see these men. I need to hear what has happened.”
He argued with her, but she would not be budged. She simply could not fight the compulsion to stay.
Eventually, as Rudy had said, the men began to come back. Slowly. Beaten, ragged, weary.
And Callie found herself down by the well.
And it was there that she stood when Daniel Cameron rode into her life once again.
Rode in worn, weary, ragged.
And furious still!
“Angel … ”
DANIEL
July 4, 1863
Near Sharpsburg
Maryland
Perhaps, after the long months of waiting, of dreaming, of seeing her in his sleep, of hearing her voice even in the midst of shells, he had not believed that she could be as beautiful as he had remembered.
But she was.
Daniel watched as she offered his officer water. Watched her move, listened to the musical flow of her voice. Even as he did so, he felt his fingers curling into fists, felt a sizzling heat of fury and bitterness come sweeping through him. He had to hate her. She had used her beauty, used the softness of her voice, the fiery flow of her hair against him.
And still, she enchanted. Enchanted every man who passed her way. The word came to the lips of these men as easily as it had once come to his. Angel. God alone could have sculpted such a face. Created the color of her hair, the pools of her eyes.
This sweet creature from heaven!
And seductress born of Hell, he reminded himself, swallowing hard. Looking at her a man could forget
that she had so sweetly coerced and lured him, forget the irons about his wrists, the days in prison, the cold dampness of Old Capitol, the misery, the humiliation.
By the gate, he dismounted from his horse and watched her.
Damn her. Was betrayal perhaps her business? Had other soldiers stumbled her way, had she seduced them, and seen them turned in, just as she had done with him?
God, he was weary! But no weariness could take away his fury at this moment! Had she but turned old and haggard, had she not been so unbelievably beautiful still! But there she stood. His angel. Their angel. Her dress so simple that it enhanced the perfection and loveliness of her womanhood.
Did she remember him?
Ah, but she would, he swore.
As the last of his cavalry soldiers passed by, Daniel came in to greet her by the well.
“Angel of mercy indeed. Is there, perhaps, a large quantity of arsenic in that well?”
She didn’t move, but just stood there. The slight breeze lifted her hair, and in the coming night it seemed to burn with a dark fire. She seemed to gaze about him, and then her eyes fell on his, wide, gray. Did they dilate, perhaps? He felt the grinding of his teeth, the tearing emotion sweep through him. If she was afraid in the least of his revenge, she showed no sign of it. She stood like crystal, no, porcelain, still and perfect, the perfect heart of her face an ivory softly tinted rose at the cheeks, her beautiful lips as red as any long forgotten rose, her eyes, as always, silver orbs that shimmered and taunted the soul.
He smiled suddenly. She certainly wasn’t going to cower. She was, as ever, ready for battle.
“Hello, angel!” he said softly.
Still she was silent, proud and silent. Yet at last he
could see the rise and fall of her breasts with the uneven whisper of her breath; he could see a pulse at her throat, beating there in fury. Why? he wondered. Was it fear at last? Did his angel realize that a man cast into hell came back by far the worse for wear?
The heat was ripping through him, tearing through his limbs, spiraling around his chest, and tightening low in his groin. Well, here he was at last. Standing before her as he had dreamed so often, as he sometimes felt he had survived to do. His fingers itched. Yes, he wanted to strangle her.
He wanted her. He wanted her with a blind fury, with a desperate desire. He wanted to hold her tightly and shake her, and he wanted to feel the softness of her flesh. He wanted to hear her cry, out his name, and he didn’t give a damn if it was with anger or despair or love Or hatred. He wanted revenge, but most of all he wanted to cool the heat that imprisoned and embraced him, slake the thirst that lived with him day and night, through days of battle and days in the saddle, through rare moments of quiet, and even in the midst of the shrill shrieks of guns and cannons and men.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked. Damn, it was hard to talk when his teeth were grating so. A slow, bitter smile curved his lip. “How very unusual. Weren’t you expecting me?”
He didn’t dare touch her. Not yet. He took the dipper from her fingers, lowered it into the bucket, and raised the water from her well to his lips. It was cool and sweet. It did nothing to ease the fire burning ever more brightly throughout his limbs.
He could see that she was wondering just what venue his anger would take. That pulse against the ivory white column was beating every more rampantly.
“No poison? Perhaps some shards of glass?” he murmured.
He moved more closely toward her. His voice was
husky, low and tense and trembling with the heat of his emotion. “You look as if you’re welcoming a ghost, Mrs. Michaelson. Ah, but then, perhaps you had wished that I would be a ghost by now, long gone, dust upon the battlefield. No, angel, I am here.” He was still as several seconds ticked slowly past, as the breeze picked up, as it touched them both. He smiled again. “By God, Callie, but you are still so beautiful. I should throttle you. I should wind my fingers right around your very beautiful neck, and throttle you. But even if you fell, you would torture me still!”
At last she moved, squaring her shoulders, standing even more tall against him. Her chin hiked up, her eyes shimmered, and her tone was soft and entirely superior to any of his taunts.
“Colonel, help yourself to water, and then, if you will, ride on. This is Union territory, and you are not welcome.”
The back of her hand touched his chest. Head high, she was pushing him out of her way and starting for the house.
“Callie!”
Perhaps the extent of his rage was in his voice. Perhaps there was even more than that in the simple utter
ance
of her name.
She began to run.
“Callie!” He shouted out her name again. Every restraint within him seemed to fail. The bitterness of nearly a year ripped wide, and he didn’t know himself what he intended to do.
He followed her.
She had slammed the back door on him, bolted it against him. He hurtled his shoulder against it. It shuddered. He slammed against it again.
It began to give.
“Daniel, go away! Go home, go back to your men, to your army—to your South!”
The door burst open. She stood staring at him.
Again, he felt a taunting curl touch his lips. He hadn’t known what he would do when he saw her again. He still didn’t know.
But he was going to touch her.
“What?” he demanded, taking a stride into the kitchen. “Are there no troops close enough to come to your rescue once you’ve seduced me into your bed this time?”
He ducked quickly. Her fingers had curled around a coffee cup, and hurtled it across the kitchen at him.
“Go away!” she commanded him.
“Go away?” he repeated. “How very rude, Mrs. Michaelson! When I have waited all these months to return? I lie awake nights dreaming for a chance to come back to your side. What a fool I was, Callie! And still, I suppose I did not learn.”
He swept his hat from his head and sent it flying to the kitchen table. “Well, I have come back, angel. And I’m very anxious to pick up right where I left off. Let’s see, where was that? Your bedroom, I believe. Ah, that’s right. Your bed. And let’s see, just how were we situated?”
“Get out of my house!” she charged him,
“Not on your life,” he promised. “Not, madam, on your life!”
He strode toward her.
“Don’t!” she cried out instantly.
Her denial seemed to touch him inside and out, adding fuel to the fire that raged so viciously inside of him. Dear God! Where was everything he had learned through a lifetime? Where was restraint, forgiveness, mercy?
He remembered the chill on his naked back when the Yanks had taken him. He remembered being in
love with her. Damn her, but he remembered trusting her.
“This is one invasion of the North that is going to be successful!” Indeed, yes. Let it be a battle.
A battle that he would not lose.
He began to walk toward her once again. Maybe his intent was clear in his movement. Or perhaps she saw it in the cold hard glimmer of his eyes. Some sound escaped her, and she knocked over a chair in his way.
It wouldn’t stop him. Not tonight.
“Don’t, damn you!” she cried out suddenly. Her breasts were heaving more swiftly now with her growing agitation. Angel, you can falter and fall, and so beautifully. For a moment he almost paused. For a moment it was there again, the silver softness in her eyes, the sweetness in her voice. The plea, the seduction. “You have to listen to me—” she began.
The seduction. Yes, damn her.
“Listen to you!” he exploded. He was shaking. His flesh was on fire. His fingers twitched.
“Callie, time is precious! I have not come to talk this night. I listened to you once before.”
“Daniel, don’t come any nearer. You must—”
“I must finish what you started, Callie. Then maybe I can sleep again at night.”
He reached for her arm and the fire in his eyes seemed to sizzle through both of them.
“Daniel, stop!” she hissed. She jerked free of him and ran.
But tonight, there was nowhere for her to run. He followed her.
She stopped and found a vase and tossed it his way. He ducked again, and the vase crashed
against
a wall. She tore through the parlor, looking for more missiles. A shoe came flying his way, a book, a newspaper. Nothing
halted
his stride.
She reached the stairs, and he was there behind her.
She started to race up them and realized her mistake. He was behind her. She reached the landing.
He caught her by her hair. He thought that she cried out, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was having her.
He swept her into his arms and strode the last few steps to the bedroom, the bedroom where she had lured him once before.
“Let’s finish what we started, shall we, angel?”