Glory (2 page)

“She has to see me?” he inquired, his stomach tightening. She had some warning for him. Or some trick. He started to hand the envelope back, unopened. “Tell her I can’t come,” he told Dabney.

“She says the matter is urgent, you must come, sir.”

“Why would this lady think I would be willing to see her, now, when I am so sorely needed elsewhere?”

“Sir, I can’t say. Perhaps you should open the envelope.”

He didn’t want to do so. He gritted his teeth, looking down at the cream parchment. He opened the envelope, and read the words.

“Captain McKenzie, I know how unwilling you must be to answer any missive of mine, but I must see you. I am relying upon the fact that you were raised a gentleman, and as such, with death on every horizon, you would not leave me to lead a life of shame, nor cast an innocent into the ignominy of a tainted future. Therefore, sir, I beg of you, meet me. There is a small Episcopal church down on the pike. I’ll not keep you from your war long.”

Dabney Crane didn’t say anything. He studied Julian with intense curiosity.

Julian stared back at Dabney, determined to betray nothing but disinterest. Yet his heart was suddenly hammering with a fierce beat as he wondered just what was truth here. Had she finally ceased to deny what had come between them?

“Captain?” Dabney said anxiously.

“I can spare but a few minutes. Men are dying.”

Dabney shook his head sadly. “That they are, sir. I can’t begin to imagine those who will awaken this morning to die by nightfall. But I do suggest, sir, that if you have a mind to see this lady at all, you take your few spare minutes now. Colonel Joe Clinton from Georgia had agreed to meet his nephew, Captain Zach Clinton of Maine, at the river last night. Captain Zach showed, but Colonel Joe had been killed.”

Every muscle within him seemed to tighten. What if he refused to meet her, and he died? And what if she were expecting his child, would she raise it with another man’s heritage, another man’s name?

Pride, he taunted himself. What it could do to a man was terrible.

“Sir?”

“I need my horse—”

“Take old Ben, sir. He’s a healthy mount, and as fast as the wind. You must go now. Before the troops begin to waken.”

And before it’s determined I’m a deserter, he thought wryly.

“Sir,” Dabney reminded him, “time is of the essence.”

Julian hesitated. He didn’t trust Rhiannon. But if it was a trick, he decided grimly, no matter—she was going to get what she had asked for. “I’m going immediately,” he told Dabney. “Go quickly now and waken Father Vickery. Send him behind me, quickly.”

“Yessir.” Dabney smiled, delighted that he seemed to have brought off an intimate liaison.

Julian accepted Dabney Crane’s offer of the use of his horse. Riding past Rebel pickets, he identified himself, and crossed the Rebel line into the no-man’s-land between the Rebs and the Yanks. Approaching the church, he slowed his mount, and waited on a ridge where the trees still stood, remnants of a small forest all but destroyed by cannon fire. He watched, carefully surveying the area.

The church itself was on a spit of open ground, with much of the foliage and many of the fields around it mown down by the fighting. If there were Yanks surrounding the church, he should have seen them. Dismounting from his horse by the trees, he watched cautiously a moment longer, then hunched low to the ground, inching his way across the open expanse before the small church. Reaching the doorway, he pressed it partially open, and slipped inside.

She was there. She stood before the altar, her back to him, her head bowed. She still wore black. Black was the color typically worn for a full year of mourning—and God knew, she mourned her Richard! But for her wedding to another man? Yet, even if she was sincere in this endeavor, it still meant nothing more than words and respectability to her. She wore black inside, around her heart, and he hadn’t the power to lighten that shade.

Still, it appeared that she had come alone. He took his time, watching, waiting, wary of her. Wanting to appear casual, he leaned back comfortably against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest.

“You summoned me?” he said quietly at last, and she spun around, startled, alarmed, her hand flying to her throat.

For a moment, just for a moment, in the soft, flickering candlelight of the small church, he thought he saw a flash of emotion in the depths of her bewitching green eyes. Then she regained control, hiding whatever feelings had plagued her.

“You’ve come!” she said.

He shrugged, keeping his distance from her. It was amazing, but nothing seemed to mar her. Her mourning clothing was simple, as befitted her work in the Union field hospitals. She was slim, worn, weary, and still regal, stately, and very beautiful. Her hair was neatly pulled back, netted into a bun at her nape, yet its rich darkness seemed to shimmer blue-black with the slightest touch of the candlelight. Her throat was long and elegant; her fingers cast against it were the same.

“I repeat, you’ve summoned me.”

She nodded, looking down then. “I didn’t hear you come,” she murmured. “Have you been there long?”

“Long enough. Are you communing with God? Or with Richard?”

She raised her head; her eyes caught his. There was fire within them at his caustic tone. “This is extremely awkward for me,” she told him, her voice sincerely pained.

“I can imagine. You have gone from thinking you could convince me that nothing had happened to demanding that I do the gentlemanly thing.”

“I believe ... that it’s necessary!” she whispered.

“And Richard has been dead just a little too long?”

“How dare you mock him!”

“I’m not mocking the dead, Rhiannon, just calculating the facts.”

“How rude!”

“This is war, Rhiannon. I’m afraid some of the niceties of life have slipped away. You summoned me because you want something out of me. So please, talk to me.”

“What do you want out of me?” she demanded fiercely.

“Well, an admission that something happened.”

She gritted her teeth and her eyes touched his with a glitter of anger. “Oh, my God, don’t you understand? I didn’t want anything to happen, I still can’t believe that I ... that I ...”

“Mistook a flesh-and-blood man for Richard’s ghost.”

They still stood the length of the aisle apart. He thought that she would have slapped him had they not. Perhaps he deserved it. It was simply hard to have been used as a substitute, then summoned as a social convenience. But if there was a child ...

He waved a hand in the air. “Never mind. As you pointed out in your letter, it’s a deadly war. I want my child born with my name—it is my child, right? You haven’t been seducing other men in the midst of drug-induced illusions, have you?”

She stared at him with regal disdain, then started down the aisle to pass him by. “You never mind. Whatever comes in the future will have to come. Nothing could be so wretched as you—”

He didn’t allow her past him. He caught her arm, and forced her eyes to his. “Where’s the priest, Rhiannon?”

“What?”

“You summoned me to marry you. Where’s the priest?”

Her eyes widened. “He’s—he’s on his way. I—I needed time to talk with you, to ask you first, naturally, to—”

“To set me up?” he accused softly.

“No! I—I—” she stuttered. Her lashes fell again. “Damn you! I need you to marry me.” She stared at him again, fire in her gaze once again. “Do you wish to do it or not?”

He hesitated, smiling slowly.

“If you’ve just come to torment me, let go—”

“Marry you? Of course, with the greatest pleasure. How could I possibly refuse such a heartfelt request?”

A sound at the door sent him spinning around. Damn her! She so easily taunted him from the care he usually took. But it was Father Vickery who had come, the young Georgian Episcopal priest.

“I’m sorry I’ve taken so long,” he apologized, nervously stroking his chin as he hurried in. “I wanted to make sure that I properly record the marriage, assure that it’s legal.”

“Of course!” Rhiannon said softly. “You were sent here, to help us, of course?” she queried.

Julian watched her. Had she been expecting a priest? Or was she assuming Vickery had been sent by her Yankee cohorts?

Vickery cleared his throat. “We needed witnesses as well,” he said, opening the door a few inches farther. “I really moved as quickly as I could, recruiting these ladies!”

Two young women had accompanied them. They both smiled.

“This is so romantic!” said the rounder of the pair. “I’m Emma Darrow, this is my sister, Lucy.”

“Lovely, just lovely!” Lucy agreed.

“Thank you,” Rhiannon murmured.

“Charmed!” Emma supplied, and giggled.

“So lovely!” Lucy said again.

“We must hurry and get back. The dawn is beginning to break in earnest, and God knows what horrors today will bring!” Father Vickery said. He caught Rhiannon’s hand, hurrying down the aisle with her. “You stand there. I’ll give you into marriage myself—you are the lady in question, right?”

“Yes, she is, Father,” Julian supplied dryly, since she was the only other female present. If the whole thing weren’t so sad, it would be amusing.

But Father Vickery, though nervous, suddenly seemed to have his wits about him. He began the rite of marriage, speaking very quickly, but clearly. When it came time for Rhiannon to give her vows, she stared at Julian in white silence.

He squeezed her hand so tightly she eked out a cry, but then, choking over the words, she spoke them. Clearly. Loudly. Keeping her hand tight in his, Julian gave his promise to love, honor, and cherish her, as long as they both should live. He used his family signet ring for a wedding band.

“I now pronounce you man and wife. Kiss your bride, and get back to camp!” Father Vickery said. He hurriedly started down the aisle to exit the church. “Emma, Lucy, come along, come along. Julian, you must hurry! Kiss the lady, be done with it!” It was a final warning. Father Vickery fled, but still, Julian didn’t touch his bride.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asked. She looked as if she were about to expire.

“Well, one way or the other, it is done,” he said briefly. “But you’ll forgive me; I really can’t linger. Yet, I warn you. I pray to God you’ll have the sense to keep safe. I may be in enemy territory, but I do have ways to make sure that you don’t risk a child’s life the way you do your own.”

He turned away from her. “Wait!” she cried.

He turned back.

“Stay, just a minute. ...” she whispered.

He shook his head. “I can’t stay.”

Quite suddenly, she threw herself at him. She came into his arms smelling seductively like roses. Her fingers twined into the hair at his nape, she came upon her toes, and found his lips. Her tongue teased for entry. Stunned, he found himself enfolding her to him, weeks of abstinence tearing into his system, and giving him a hunger for her that seemed to tear into his heart and mind. He kissed her passionately in return, holding her close, tasting her, savoring each second. ...

Then vaguely, he became aware of the sounds beyond the church. She broke away from him at last.

Her words were whispered with lips not an inch from his own, still damp from the passion of their kiss.

“I’m sorry, Julian. But, you see, you would have died.”

The passion? The
trickery.
He’d been right all along. He’d been the biggest fool in the world. She had lured him here, careful of the timing, keeping the Yankees away at first, knowing full well he would be watching for a trap. But now, they had arrived. Discreetly. Quietly. They were outside the church, ready to break in, to seize him should he become too enamored of his bride.

He wore a Colt in a holster at his side, and at times, he wore a dress sword as well. Not tonight, and not that it mattered. He was a surgeon, a medical man, not a strategist, and not the usual Yankee prey. And many Yanks would just as soon die as face a Rebel surgeon. But many more were probably willing to bear his touch if it meant that their lives be spared, or if a limb might be saved.

Bitterness swept through him. He wasn’t going to pull the Colt, kill the men sent to seize him, and go down in a blaze of glory himself. They’d shoot him down from the front door. And he intended to live. Besides, there might be a chance to escape later without being shot down, if he kept his wits about him.

He pulled away from her, staring into her eyes. The truth was there. Every bit of it. She had planned this, so that he might be captured. She had thrown the kiss in at the last minute so that he would not leave too quickly. “You bitch!” he accused her softly.

“I said I was sorry!”

He caught her about the waist once again, jaw taut, ice seeming to fill his veins. He held her with such a force that she was crushed against him, her back arched, her chin high. “Dear wife,” he promised her, “trust me, I will see to it that you are very, very sorry, indeed.”

She shook her head, angry now at the way he held her—and that she hadn’t the power to escape his arms. “You persist in being a foolish Rebel. I’m not your wife, and you will not make me sorry! That priest was no more real than my story.”

So it had all been a ruse. But she was mistaken.

He laughed softly. “I beg to differ, my dear. That was Father Vickery, out of Atlanta, devoted to his Georgian boys. Georgians, being Florida neighbors, try to help us out and the good Father Vickery just happened to be the closest clergy when I was getting ready to ride out. You may not be expecting my child. But I’m afraid that you are my wife.”

Disbelief touched her eyes.

The door to the church burst open. “Captain McKenzie! Julian!”

He knew the voice, and he wasn’t surprised, other than the fact that a general could be spared at this hour to take part in a capture. He had saved General Angus Magee’s foot when the fellow had nearly pushed it to a point when only amputation would have saved his life.

“General Magee, sir!” he returned pleasantly, still staring at Rhiannon.

“Julian, step away from Mrs. Tremaine and drop your weapon, sir!”