Glory (43 page)

They started out by train, but in some places the rails had been destroyed, the enemy was in close proximity, or they had to be rerouted because the enemy was literally holding the depot. They were constantly surrounded by other travelers, refugees from cities lost to the North at times, soldiers on leave, prisoners who had been paroled, orphans. It was a strange time for them; they’d both been so furious with one another, and yet things had changed after their awful experience with Colonel Sheer. There was little chance to really talk. They were so seldom alone.

At last they reached Jacksonville. They did so by wagon; the rails there had not been taken by the enemy, but they had been taken by the Confederacy since they were desperately needed elsewhere. The city was like a ghost town. It had been invaded and abandoned so many times that most of the families had fled.

Rhiannon was bone weary when they arrived. She’d had no sleep the night before, since they had not known they wouldn’t have transport until the last minute. They rented a room, and they should have been alone. She had been anxiously looking forward to the opportunity, but they had done no more than come into the dining room for a meal when Julian was approached by a cavalryman in a worn, muddied uniform.

“Sir! Colonel McKenzie, sir! We’re delighted to have you back!” He offered Julian a salute and continued, “There’s news that the Yanks are planning to start a new offensive against us. They’re making their plans now. Well, of course, the skirmishing never ends, the attacks on the coast go on and on ... but now they think that we’re important—that we’re supplying just about the whole of the Confederacy with the food that’s keeping the army going. Don’t that beat all, sir—we’re in the war.”

“We’ve been in the war, sir. Look around you,” Julian responded dryly.

“Yes, of course, but ... there could be a really major battle here. Like the battles in Virginia and Tennessee!”

“Half the state could perish, I imagine,” Julian murmured. “Sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’ve traveled a long way, my wife is tired—”

“Of course, my apologies. But, sir, you’re needed immediately. There was some fighting today between here and St. Augustine, on the old Indian road. I do welcome you back, sir, but I’m afraid I’m also here to remind you that you’re a colonel in the Florida militia—and that duty, sir, calls. I must have you accompany me.”

“I am always glad to help when needed, but I’ve just arrived. My wife—”

“We’ll arrange an escort to have her taken back to camp, sir.”

Julian looked at Rhiannon. “You have to go,” she told him. “I will be at the camp when you reach it.”

So he traveled on alone that night. She thought that she would never sleep, but that night she did. Dreamlessly. When she awoke in the morning, an escort awaited her that included several of the men she had known at the Rebel camp before. They greeted her warmly, and she was glad, surprised at how much of a homecoming it seemed to be.

She was delighted to find that Rachel had heard she was coming and had left St. Augustine to meet her in the camp in the woods. Rachel was as boisterous as ever, talking a mile a minute, describing the McKenzie children, and life with Alaina and Risa in the Union-held city. “Such a place! Some of the women are so funny. They’re loyal Rebs to the core, but when the Yank doling out the food comes around, they’re suddenly waving their Union colors!”

Rachel went on and on, but Rhiannon was glad to see her. So many of the Rebels at the camp had been conscripted into the regular army that it was almost like Jacksonville, a ghost of the place it used to be.

She’d been back a week when she went to the little creek off the river. Liam Murphy, his one leg gone, had returned two days after she’d arrived herself, and he’d set himself up as her guardian. She was grateful. At the water’s edge, she stripped down to her shift, then plunged in. After the heat of the day, the water was amazing. She floated upon her back. Moss dripped from the trees. A crane flew overhead. A breeze picked up and rustled through the surrounding oaks. She closed her eyes. It was a scene of peace in the midst of chaos.

When she opened her eyes, he was there.

She sensed him, standing by the shore. Watching her. She came to her feet, ignoring the ooze of the creek bottom through her toes. She walked to a point several feet from where he stood. Dusk was coming, the sun falling. A rainbow of colors spilled across the sky, reflecting on the water. He stood tall, hard, lean, his frock coat dangling from a finger. She hesitated a minute, then walked the last few steps to him, slipping her arms around him.

He enwrapped her against him.

Together they came to their knees. Water soaked his uniform, but it didn’t seem to matter; the soaked material was only something to be discarded. His hands were upon her shift, and it found its way to the embankment. His fingers entwined with hers, and she was stretched across the riverbank, and as his body came over hers, it was decked in the rainbow colors of the setting sun. She touched his face, wanting to talk, too full of the things she had to say to do so. He kissed her, lips lingering upon hers, then growing insistent. His tongue invaded her mouth, ravaged. His lips broke from hers, found them again. He seemed to taste forever and ever. Each kiss ignited a greater need in her, and she felt the length of him with a longing that surpassed need. His body was fire, and the river was ice. His kiss strayed from her lips. Her teeth and tongue grazed his shoulders. Hands caressed the fullness of her breasts, tender now, yet aching for his subtle stroke. The air around them swirled, caressed her naked flesh, followed the touch of his kiss, the liquid fire of his tongue as he drew patterns down her torso. His fingers moved over her hips, formed around her buttocks, drew her closer to the fullness of his erection. She thought that she would die, yet he did not cease to seduce. She murmured, writhed, undulated, pressed against him, seducing in turn. Kissed his shoulders, chest, stroked him, held him, cradled, whispered, and at last, when she was nearly mindless with longing, he came into her, a stroke that filled her, awakened her, excited her, erupted ...

The sun continued to set. A bird cried overhead. The wind rustled the trees. Fire burned between them, explosive, consuming. Twilight became dusk, and the colors were gone, and the moon began to rise against the dying day. It seemed that all life exploded in a moment of fantastic beauty. That there could be such horror and destruction and in the midst of it such sweet beauty. She savored him, held his warmth as her body cooled and the night wrapped around her. She seemed to float upon a pinnacle of wonder for a very long time, but inevitably she drifted down, yet she didn’t attempt to move. When he shifted, and his eyes met hers, she didn’t flinch from them.

“I was afraid,” he said huskily.

“You, afraid?” she whispered, smoothing back a dark lock of his hair.

He nodded, a crooked smile on his lips. “Afraid that I would come back tonight, and you wouldn’t be here. You would have vanished, run to St. Augustine ... somewhere. Or if you were here, I would arrive, and ... we would be at war again.”

“We are still at war,” she said softly.

“Are we?” he murmured, and he leaned back upon an elbow, a frown touching his eyes as he gently drew his fingers over her arm, traced patterns against her hip. “I don’t know that I’m at war. I’m not always sure what I’m fighting for anymore, sometimes things I don’t think that I believe in. And yet ...”

“And yet?”

“I just keep thinking now that this is home. That I’m back here.”

“Because of me,” she whispered apologetically.

He shook his head, his crooked smile in place. “You’re not to blame because death sent a man over the edge.” A hard core of anger touched his voice. “He was beating you!” he said hoarsely.

“They could have shot you for attacking an officer.”

“Ah! A death I would have gallantly accepted, of course. No man may touch my wife in violence. He had no right, even if he’d never touched you, he had no right. There are good things to our way of life. What he did went against everything that is what we call honor.”

“The last of the great cavaliers!” she murmured.

“Yes, and no. I don’t know of a Yank who would have behaved any differently,” he admitted.

She smiled, reached out, and touched his cheek. He caught her hand, kissed the palm. “I wanted to come home,” he said softly.

“So did I.”

“You’re not really home.”

“We’ll visit soon enough.”

“You’re back in a Rebel camp.”

“I’m where I want to be.”

“Oh?” He arched a brow, pulling her naked body closer to his. “Here, exactly here?”

She nodded solemnly, then looked steadily into his eyes. “Julian, I love you.”

“My God, Rhiannon—”

“Wait ... hear me out. There was a time when I wanted to die. When I hated the world, and I hated myself, and I couldn’t bear the pain. Then you came riding in. And you made me see what I was doing, and ... you gave me back love, Julian. Respect. For myself. You gave me love again, and more, you gave me life. And I do love you. Far more than any cause, than any war or battle. I look in your eyes and I see the pain there for others, and I love you more for it. We’re not enemies. We both know that the war is wrong. You have given me back everything, even my belief in my fellow man, and wherever you are is where I want to be.”

The moon shifted; the river seemed to glitter. The night was in his eyes, and he seemed to look at her forever, and then he pulled her to him, beneath him, and he was kissing her again and whispering against her lips. “I can’t believe it. I never thought that I could dispel the ghost of Richard. It was torture, wanting you, being seduced, for you are a witch, my love, and from the moment I saw you, I was beneath your spell, and every minute away from you seemed to weave me more tightly into that spell until I wondered if I could survive, wanting you so much ...”

She didn’t respond with words. Her soul seemed alive with the moonlight that had come to glitter upon the water. She swept her arms around him, stroked the length of his back, felt the ripple of muscle beneath her lips as she kissed his shoulders, moved against him, kissed, touched, stroked, aroused ...

His hands were upon her. The tip of his tongue was a sure stroke of fire against her flesh, teasing, intimate, seducing, demanding, finding every intimacy. And again he was in her. And the world was full of magic, and she was glad for this wild, wicked haven within the desperate storm of life around them, and she knew then that love and peace were in the soul, and though she couldn’t change the world, she had changed herself.

They made love into the wee hours of the morning. And when they dressed and left the water at last, it was as if they had been baptized into a new life.

The days that followed were good. The camp was reestablished. Captain Dixie, or Jonathan Dickinson, the militia captain who almost single-handedly managed to keep much of Florida under Rebel control, came through with some of his wounded and reported on matters within the state. Yes, there were reports that the Yanks intended to make a major sweep into the state. They had to cut off the Confederacy. Florida was the breadbasket. The elusive coastline made it a maddening place to the Yanks.

Injured came in from the skirmishing. The days passed without incidence.

Then she was haunted by another dream.

There was shelling upon the water’s edge. A ship had come into the river and was shelling salt works. There was an explosion, bodies flew everywhere, the dream seemed bathed in blood.

Julian was in her dream. Leading men to find the fallen. Then again ...

There was an explosion. Sharp golden light burst across her vision in the dream, then faded, and she knew that ...

Julian was dead.

She woke with a start. He wasn’t beside her. She rose, threw on her dress, and came running out. To her horror she saw that he and a handful of men—all that manned the camp in the woods—were saddling their poor horses, ready to ride.

She ran to his side. “Julian, you can’t go.”

“Rhiannon!” he said, startled. The men were all staring at him. He dismounted from his horse, taking her hands. “I have to go. There’s a report of a Yankee ship on the river.”

“Don’t go.”

“I have to go.”

“But you trust me. You can’t go.”

“I can’t shirk my duty. I can’t hide behind your skirts.”

“I had a dream!”

He shook his head impatiently. “I won’t be in the action, my love. But if there are injuries, this camp will be too far from the action.”

“Julian!” she snapped, dismayed. He straightened, and she realized that, of course, she was making a scene in front of his men, that he had refused to see his own danger, even if he did trust in her visions. He was leaving. She hadn’t the power to stop him. Or did she?

She stepped back. He shook his head, coming toward her again. Taking her by the arms, he kissed her. She kissed him back, suddenly passionate. He eased from her arms and mounted his horse.

When the men had ridden out, she went for her horse.

Liam watched her worriedly. “Rhiannon—”

“Don’t ask, Liam.”

“I can’t let you go.”

“I am already gone!”

But she had barely started down the trail when she realized that there was a horseman after her. She tried to race her nag; she was too easily run down. She turned, just before she was accosted, to realize that it was Julian. He had waited in the woods; he had come after her.

He caught her horse’s reins, jerked the animal to a stop, dismounted from his own horse and jerked her from the saddle.

“So you would have me captured again!” he accused her furiously.

“I would have you alive!” she retorted.

“Well, you won’t be going to the Yanks this time!” he told her angrily. She spun around. His men had ridden up behind them.

“Liam, take her back. Hog-tie her if you have to. Don’t let her go to St. Augustine to report our movements!”

He thrust her toward Liam, who unhappily accepted his responsibility.

“Sir, she’s hard to hold—”

“As I said,” Julian stated determinedly, “tie her up if you have to!”