Surrender the Wind (2 page)

Once inside, in case the Reb decided to pay her a call, Catherine bolted the door. She leaned her forehead against the door, almost feeling sorry for him, injured and braving the storm. Unlike her, warm and cozy in her own home. Her gaze wandered to a heart-shaped locket she wore, pictures of her parent’s closed safe inside, and then to the…footprints.

Her nerves pulled tight. A mish-mash of muddy footprints peppered the floor—footprints larger than hers. She whipped around.
The Reb.
Did she grab a knife from the sideboard or throw the bolt and run?

Instead of doing either, she froze. Even with his leanness, he dwarfed her. Tall, threatening and dangerous, his steel-blue eyes held her, compelling, magnetic. The clear-cut lines of his profile, unhidden by the shadow of his beard, gave him a rakish look. Encrusted with mud, it was too hard to tell the color of his hair. Despite his ill state, he exuded an air of confidence and intelligence, and beneath the filth and dark beard, a rugged flesh and blood man radiated strength, masculinity, and power.

His calm did not fool her. Face flushed, he shivered and sweated with fever. Was he trying to gather a sense of time and place, or recognition of her with her mud-laden dress and long wet hair? Or worse, maybe he was assessing other plans for her. She could not tell. She dared not move. Still she remained, mesmerized, fascinated, and drawn into those steel-blue orbs.

He raised his hand to touch her. She stepped back.

“Don’t leave me,” he said, and crashed to the floor.

Long seconds passed. She drew a deep breath, forcing herself to relax. He was wounded, but if she tried to help, would he wake and do her harm? The slow tick of the parlor clock beat incongruous to the man’s labored raspy breathing.

His mud-caked coat had fallen open revealing a once-white shirt sopped with black-crusted blood and fresh red blood. She stepped back, then forward again, reached out, then drew her hand away. In her entire existence nothing had prepared her for this. He needed a doctor. No. He needed a miracle.

His chest rose and fell—barely. He had lost a great deal of blood and would probably die. She cursed the dispassionate nature of Union doctors. Why had they not treated an injured man?

And wasn’t she just as dispassionate if she didn’t do something to help. If she left him to bleed to death without lifting a finger. There was another issue…the impropriety of attending a man alone. She snorted. A feeble excuse. She’d never been one to bow to conventionality.

His steel-blue eyes flashed in her mind, wounded eyes, like those of a child reaching out to her for solace, shadowed with sincerity.

“Don’t leave me.”
Her heart lurched. How could she abandon anyone with such a plea?

Girding herself with resolve, she recalled every single surgery Dr. Parks had performed at MacDougall Hospital in Fort Schuyler on the city’s edge where she volunteered assisting him throughout the war. After washing her hands, she grabbed a pair of scissors, cut off the Rebel’s clothes, and then covered the lower part of his body with a sheet. Except for a minor knee abrasion, he was fine there. But his head was hot to her touch. Would she lose him to a fever? Twice as many soldiers, North and South, died from illness than from actual battle. Sickness and death held no discrimination.

She filled a basin with water from the kettle on the stove. Dr. Parks had warned her to keep everything clean so the patient would not fall ill from the treatment. She sponged and rinsed off blood, mud and filth. Blackish-purple mottled the side of his abdomen. He moaned when she rolled him to check for an exit wound. None. The bullet was lodged inside. As she washed away the last fragments of clotted blood, the coppery smell of fresh blood wafted. New blood was a good sign, wasn’t it?

Could she get the ball out? She procured a knife, needle, thread and clean cotton cloth. Alcohol was needed for sterilization. Remembering a bottle of whiskey left in the cupboard by the former schoolmaster, Catherine retrieved it, pouring liberal amounts over her hands, instruments and his wound. She gritted her teeth and began to probe, praying he’d remain unconscious and that no internal organs were damaged. Her fingers slid stickily through his muscle. Bile rose in her throat. She exhaled when she felt the ball.

Doing the deed was not as easy as it had been watching Dr. Parks. The ball eluded her grasp. The Reb thrashed and screamed. She scrunched her eyes shut, pushed down, seized the ball with her fingertips and pulled it out. She threw the ball aside, cleaned him up, again, and bound his wounds.

Fire! Fire! God he was hot. Fever clouded Rourke’s dreams and numbed his brain. Attack! Attack! Everywhere attack. Do not let the enemy rest. General John Daniel Rourke knew the importance of first assault. General Robert E. Lee had ordered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to attack Grant’s Union Army first. John scrutinized the unyielding terrain swallowing up his Rebel brigade, the Seventh and Twelfth Virginia Infantry.

A light fog nestled in the hollows and streams…and the rising sun bathed the woods in a haunting gray mist. General Rourke halted his column to see what was ahead of him. Canteens clanged against other accoutrements, officers shouted commands, tree branches crunched, underfoot in rhythmic pattern. A Union infantry line advanced toward his front. Not yet. Giving a hand signal, so as not to alert the Yanks of their position, the Rebs disappeared around trees like specters in the ground fog.

“Fire!” John roared. Rising en masse, the Confederates volleyed point-blank. The Yanks recoiled under the blast firing, rallying, closing ranks, loading again and returning fire. An asphyxiating pall of burnt powder hung low in the pines and blooming dogwoods, making it difficult to tell friend from foe. Ear-splitting shouts rang from the bush in front of them. Yankees…regiments of Yankees.

“Retreat!” John ordered. Minie balls whistled and hummed about them like swarming bees. His men dodged and darted around trees and bounded over logs. John staggered under the impact of a spent ball that glanced off the knee flap of his heavy boot. Around him, several of his men cried out and toppled to the earth, mortally wounded.

Between shouts and curses, a furious Yankee commander, shrieked, “Throw down your guns! Drop your colors! Surrender!”

Never would he surrender! An exploding bullet seared into his side, sending a shower of his blood over the forest floor. His men scattered and disappeared in a melee over the ridge. Another volley of shots cracked from behind. A bullet burned against his skull, knocking him beneath dense undergrowth.

Pungent smells of earth, blood and sulfur assailed John’s nostrils. His own blood dripped from his head wound, salty on his lips. Distant cries of the wounded wailed around him. His men would have been back for him if they could. It must have been a serious rout. Glancing to his left, he found under his hand a grinning skull; and beneath that, bleached bones with weather-stained clothing. This was a fallen hero of last year’s Battle of the Wilderness. Ironic, his parting company, a smirking, grisly ghost. No matter if he was Reb or Yank. He would be joining his boney friend soon.

General John Daniel Rourke’s vision cleared to a blurred fuzziness. He strived to ignore the searing pain in his side, struggled to get a bearing on his surroundings. A woman sat in a chair, her head lying on the bed and facing him. Asleep. John studied her in repose. Cascades of long thick gold hair, the color of sunlight and honey, hung in graceful curves over her shoulders and down her back. Sooty lashes dusted delicate ivory cheeks. Her nose was straight, short and charming, and her lips, full and rosy.

Where was he?
John shook the cobwebs cluttering his mind. Out a single window soared a high sloping green mountain. Was he a prisoner? In a hospital? He stretched. His side burned like hell. He’d been shot—and he was still alive.
Escape.

Dusk approached the western sky and cast a glowing mixture of vermilion, orange and gold throughout the room’s interior. Even the woman was swathed in gold. Who was she? A northerner or southern sympathizer? Nothing made sense, especially the beautiful woman at his side. And John had grown cynical toward beautiful women.

He did not wake her. She stretched, her hand entwined in his, as if it were a natural thing to do. Her fingers felt cool, soft, stroking against his warm palm in a possessive gesture, as if she owned him. John had never been a man to be owned by a woman. Yet, somehow he favored her gentle touch.

The room had standard appointments. An armoire stood against the wall, and to the right, a matching dresser with mirror on top. Next to the bed, a round top table with an oil lamp, pitcher and washbasin. No weapons. A photograph caught his attention, the confident pose of a young man clad in a Union Colonel’s uniform. The sheet strained across his tightened knuckles. What was he to the woman? A husband? A beau? A lover?

Keep your priorities in check
. John relaxed his grip. He had to get back to General Lee, to let him know he had survived. He had to get back to the war.

The woman stirred. John closed his eyes. His senses heightened, he perceived she stared at him. Her scent ensnared him…lilac. He heard her rise, her bare feet padding across the floor, and the click of armoire doors. He opened his eyes. She had her back to him, unaware of his conscious state. Unbuttoning her blue dress, she let it fall in a faint swish. The gentlemanly thing to do would be to make his condition known.
To hell with chivalry.
Clad in her undergarments, she bent to pick up her dress, and then reached high to hang it on a hook. Her entire profile stretched before him, her slender white neck to her firm high breasts that strained against the soft silk of her lace-edged chemise. She had a slim waist, small enough to span his hands around, flaring to rounded hips, and long lithe legs. John swallowed. He had been in battle too long.

With discretion, she turned her back to him again and donned a long white gown, removing her chemise from underneath. John gritted his teeth, feeling like a schoolboy bartered out of his prize. The woman stood upright, her gown buttoned to the neck for modesty sake. John’s throat went dry. The fineness of the gown left nothing to the imagination. She brushed her hair with long, slow strokes. Unable to tear his gaze away, John lay there in raw, agonizing silence. She placed her silver brush on the dresser, leaned back, massaging her fingers in the small of her back, leaving him with a clear view of the soft rounded curves beneath her gown. He was in pain and certainly not from his wound. The woman turned. He closed his eyes.

“I hope you wake soon. I need my bed. The prior schoolmaster stole most of the furniture upon his departure and you occupy the only place I have to sleep. One more night in that chair and my back will be contorted.”

John doubted anything about her would ever be contorted. For several seconds, the woman paced back and forth. The armoire doors snapped open again. Pillows were stuffed in the middle of the bed.

“There,” she said, “you have your side, and I have mine.”

John almost smiled. Would he be sharing the same bed with the local schoolmarm? He was in heaven. No. He had been thrust into everlasting fires.

After turning down the lamp, the woman slipped into the bed. He suppressed a chuckle with her diligence in keeping the pillows as a barrier, her fingers a death grip on the coverlet and held tight to her neck. Seven horses could not have pulled the coverlet away.

In the darkness, he heard a sniffle, then weeping. What caused her sorrow?

“Please Shawn, come back to me. I know you’re not dead.”

Her sobbing and her call for her lover hurled cold water on John’s fervor. A mocking inner voice cut through his thoughts and a mixture of jealousy and compassion stirred in his chest. He did not relish her devotion to her lover and no doubt, he existed in the hereafter. The war cut two ways…North and South. Thousands of men had died, leaving a void in people’s lives on the home front.

With certainty, she was a Yank—her accent pure New York. Melodious. Cultured. Years ago he had visited the city while attending West Point. He could encircle her with his arms and offer comfort, but that would shock and alarm her. She was tired, needed rest, and he needed her to help him fully recover—to escape. Instead he wished for a fine Southern cigar, contented with her warmth emanating from the pillows. This was a new experience for him, sleeping with a woman and not doing what came to mind. She shifted…her movements a faint whisper of silk against cotton. She must have given up her sorrow, her breaths coming out against his neck in a feather-like caress. Asleep.

Catherine stirred and exhaled. She had slept well, given to dreams of better days when Shawn was home and her parents were alive. Life had soared with gaiety and happiness. But they were gone. Her mother died of influenza followed by her father who died in an accident. Shawn had marched off to war, his recklessness a catalyst to his demise. She opened her eyes and stared straight into extraordinary, compelling, steel-blue eyes. A slow smile greeted her. With a gasp, she hurtled back to earth.

“Oh, my goodness.” She leaped from the bed, jerking the coverlet around her.

“Good morning,” he drawled, his voice deep and dark as she had imagined.

Heat rose from her toes to the roots of her hair, and loathe to know how long he’d been awake. “Never did I expect you to wake so soon. What you must think—”

He grinned. “Not at all. How long have I been here?” He glanced at the pitcher.

She poured a glass of water, helped him to a seated position and tucked pillows behind him. His shoulders seemed broader against the headboard. “For two nights and three days, I have cared for you, changing your bandages and cooling you down to lower your fever. I didn’t know—”

“If I would make it.” He finished for her, returned the empty glass, and grimaced from the soreness of his injury. “I am in your debt. I’d like to know where I am.”

“Pleasant Valley, New York, a mile north of the Pennsylvania border.”
And four hundred miles from Francis.