Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (31 page)

What was she thinking? He could not be sure. He was not even sure why he cared. She had saved his life, but only because she felt her own was threatened. Her actions had not been prompted because of any favor she felt toward him. So why did he feel a warmth in his chest at her nearness?

“Travis,” she took a deep breath. “What do you intend to do with Andy and me? They say the war is going badly for the North. Why won’t you let Andy and me go before we’re killed?”

“No,” he said sharply. “You’re needed. I’ve told you that. Not many women are as skilled as you, and I can’t send you home to use those skills on the enemy. Besides, didn’t you tell me your father joined the North? Would you want him to suffer, perhaps die, because of lack of attention? Can you hate all the Federals when your own father wears our uniform and fights for our cause?”

“You forget that I’m engaged to a Confederate.”

She looked away, and he reached out and touched her cheek, turning her face back to meet his gaze. “Do you love him so much?”

“I…I do love him,” she said solemnly. “He is a good man. We’ll be very happy together once the war is over.”

“Andy told me that Nathan didn’t approve of your wanting to work in the hospital back in your hometown.”

“You know his name?” She blinked incredulously. “You’ve talked to Andy about him—and
he
talked to
you
? Why? I don’t understand. I…I’m not even sure I like it.”

“Yes, we talked. Your fiancé’s name is Nathan Collins and he fights with a group called the Wayne Volunteers. They were at Shiloh. Andy talked to me because he worries about you. I talked to him because I wanted to know if you were telling the truth about all that’s happened to you.”

Her eyes flashed defiantly. “And you believe me now?”

“Yes.”

“And you still won’t let me go?”

“No.”

“Then I wish I’d let you die.” She moved to get up, and he did not have the strength to stop her—but she paused, looked straight into his eyes and said, “Why do you hate women, Travis? Why do you take some sort of sick, perverted pleasure in seeing a woman suffer? Like that night you held me down and…and…”

“And gave you pleasure?” There was that crooked, insolent smile she hated.

She felt the color rising in her cheeks. “I can’t help what my body does. But you took pleasure in making me want you, even though you wouldn’t give yourself to me. I think that’s sick. I want to know
why
you do these things—to women, to yourself.”

He closed his eyes. He would not tell her. He had never told anyone but Sam Bucher, and then only because they were drunk one night, and the memories came flooding back to wrap around his throat and choke him into telling of his tortured past. He had loved his mother, respected her, as most young boys do. When his father was away in the bayou fishing for weeks at a time, he never thought much about his mother painting herself up to go into New Orleans because she said she was lonely. Even when she made him promise not to tell his father, he thought it was only a game.

But the game ended the night his father returned early because a storm was brewing out in the gulf, and even the waters of the bayou were starting to swell and churn. As the hurricane began to blow inland, twisting the trees to the ground, blowing houses into the wind, destroying, ravaging—Deke Coltrane had been battling a storm within himself as he set out for New Orleans to find his wife.

And he had found her—in the arms of another man. He had dragged her home as the hurricane screamed and ripped into the night, and as the wrath of nature destroyed the world around him, Deke Coltrane drank himself into a stupor and proceeded to destroy his wife—and himself.

Travis was twelve years old. His sister only two. He had hidden in the closet of the little wooden shack where they lived, the walls trembling in the forces of the storm. Petrified by what went on outside, and what was happening inside the shack, he held his sister in his arms throughout the night, unable to move as he heard his mother’s screams again and again, the sounds of his father’s fists pummeling into her flesh—beating her mercilessly.

When morning came, and the winds were calm, Travis had forced himself to step out of that closet, and he found himself in the pits of hell. His mother lay on the floor, a battered, bloody mass of what was once a beautiful woman. His father lay nearby, his throat cut with his own knife, by his own hand. Dead. Both of them dead.

Travis shielded his sister from the gory sight, and then the men came looking for his father. They wanted to take him to jail for murdering the man he’d found with his wife. Only Deke Coltrane wasn’t going anywhere except to a shallow hole in the ground.

Travis never forgot that night. He never would. He didn’t even want to erase it from his memory. He wanted to remember it so he would learn by it. His father had loved his mother, trusted her, and that love had led him straight to hell, destroying three people in the process. Never be weak, he taught himself through those painful years of struggling to grow up, never be weak and love a woman.

But there had been women—oh, yes, at sixteen he foolishly thought he was in love with a young Creole girl, and when he found out she was giving every boy around the one thing she said was his and his alone, he hated himself for being so stupid and blind as to think one woman in the whole world might exist that could be trusted.

So finally he had learned his lesson. Since then, he had made the women the ones to suffer. And he would never be weak again.

And then they came and took his sister away, and she had killed herself, and he had gone to join the war, wanting to strike out and kill. It didn’t matter if he, himself, died. No, he had never been afraid of death-only of living. Perhaps that was why he was so valued by General Grant. He would charge into battle, slashing his sword, killing, showing no mercy. Three times he had leaped over gunners to have them disembowel his horse, and he’d fallen to the ground to face them in hand to hand combat. And never did he back away from fighting or possible death.

And now, before him, sat the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. She watched him intently with those gold-dusted eyelashes brushing gently against peach-colored cheeks, her lovely sunset hair falling softly about her face. His eyes moved to her breasts, firm, pointing. In spite of his weakness from his illness, he felt a tightening in his loins. He wanted her. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life. He wanted to enter her and stay there until everything in him was drained into her. He wanted her beside him through the night, every night. He wanted to kiss those pouting lips into submission. He wanted her to stand beside him as he let the whole world know that she belonged to him and him alone.

Fool!
He let out his breath and forced his eyes away from her.
Fool! You’re nothing but a fool! She’s like all the rest. She’s no different. She just happens to be the most beautiful. That’s all.
It was the sickness, the weakness, that was making him lose his head. He had to get well, get his strength back, his control.

“I want to sleep now,” he snapped. “Get over there and look after my soldier. He needs you more than I do.”

Slowly, Kitty got to her feet, still staring at him, as though trying to see deep inside the facade of bitterness, to probe for the roots and foundation of that bitterness. “I don’t think, Travis Coltrane,” Kitty whispered, “that you’ve ever needed anyone in your entire life.”

Chapter Twenty

Kitty sat at the window, staring down at the street below. It was late August, so hot in Richmond that every stitch she wore was soaked with perspiration. The room was stuffy, the air musty and close. How long had she been a prisoner there? She had lost count of the days. Or had it been weeks? Travis had deposited her there, placed a guard outside the door. A tray of food was brought to her twice a day, her chamber pot removed, cleaned, returned. No one stayed long enough for conversation.

Straining her eyes against the glaring noonday sun, she could see the street clock in front of the jewelry store. Back in Goldsboro, there had been a similar clock in front of Gidden’s, but this was a larger store. Probably there were thousands and thousands of dollars in merchandise on display in the big glass window. Her gaze moving over the crowds in the streets, it was obvious that there were many men about who could afford to shop at that store. She’d heard some of the soldiers talking on the ride into town about the huge amounts of money circulating thanks to the army and the war and the trading in sugar, medicines, coffee, and tea.

There were many blacks about, some free and others still slaves. They were driving carriages or holding doors open, sweeping sidewalks, stepping quickly out of the way to allow white men to walk by freely, bowing to them curtly from their waists.

Whenever a white woman passed, they glanced away quickly, the white men watching to make sure that they did.

Kitty had learned to identify many of the groups of soldiers by listening to their conversations as they passed beneath the windows. The Alabama soldiers wore blue. The soldiers from Georgia wore brown uniforms with full-skirted pants and green trim. The ones from Tennessee mostly wore coonskin caps, and the Texas soldiers wore cowboy hats. Some of the ones from Arkansas did, too. The Washington Artillery, from New Orleans, wore white gloves, and once she had seen a group that called themselves New Orleans Zouaves, dressed in baggy scarlet trousers, white gaiters, low-cut blue shirts, and their jackets were embroidered heavily and braided, each armed with a bowie knife held in a bright blue sash. Most of the other Confederates, like the ones from Florida and Mississippi and South Carolina, wore gray.

So many times Kitty had been tempted to call out that window to the soldiers and tell them she was being held prisoner by Yankee spies. But the last thing Travis had said to her was that if she wanted to see Andy Shaw alive again, she had better keep quiet. And she had. Because as Andy was led roughly away, down the hall to another room in the hotel, his eyes were wide and frightened. She couldn’t risk endangering his life. No, there would be another way to escape, and she had to be patient.

The sound of the door being unlocked made her jump to her feet. She dared to hope it might be Travis at last, and she would know where they were going from here. But it wasn’t Captain Coltrane. Instead, Sam Bucher came in with a tray and set it down on the table next to the bed. She looked at it and wrinkled her nose. “Rancid mutton…turnips…and dried-out corn bread! Sam, how much longer do you think I can live on this…this garbage?”

“Kitty, I’m sorry.” He sounded as if he meant it. “The innkeeper runs a poor place, I know, but he minds his own business and doesn’t ask a lot of questions about why we’re here, and that’s important.”

“Not to me it isn’t. I wish he would ask questions. I wish all those Confederate soldiers outside would ask questions. I wish they’d kill everyone of you and set me and Andy free…”

He smiled down at her as she flopped down on the bed. “Come on now, Kitty, you don’t mean that. You’ve grown kinda fond of us, as much as we’ve been through together.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. Sam was peppery and gruff, but there was something about him that got to her. “Well, maybe if they’d kill your precious Captain and spare you…”

“That’s my girl!” He laughed and pulled up a chair and sat down. “Maybe in a day or two we can get out of here.”

“How’s Andy?”

“Fine. He just asked about you. He doesn’t have a window in his room, so he’s worse off than you are. Travis said we couldn’t trust him not to panic and yell out, but you were smart enough to know we meant business when we said to keep quiet.”

“But why are we here? And where has Travis gone? And why are all those Confederates coming and going day and night?”

“We’re here because Travis and a few of the men are out getting information from drunken Rebs, and Richmond is a boiling pot of soldiers coming and going. And when soldiers come to town they drink…and when they drink, they talk. We’re here to listen.”

She picked at the turnips, tasted them, then shoved the plate away. Horrible. The food was horrible, and she just couldn’t eat a bite. A fly settled down onto the green mass and promptly flew away. “See? Even the flies won’t eat it.”

“Maybe it won’t be long, Kitty,” Sam said sympathetically. “Believe me, I like the food you cook in camp a lot better. That cornbread looks like a pile of cow dung baked in the sun, don’t it?”

She ignored his comment, thinking how crude Sam could be at times. Getting up and walking to the window, she stared down at the street once again. “I wish your Captain would come back.”

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“Miss him?” She whirled about to stare at him in wonder. “Sam, I hate him! He’s holding me prisoner when I want to be home with my people—my mother! I…oh, no one knows how much I hate that man!”

He scratched at his beard, smiling. “Oh, I’ve seen the way you two look at each other when you think the other’n ain’t watching. It’s the war’s got you at each other’s throats. Any other time, I bet you’d fall in love.”

“You’re out of your mind!”

“Oh, I reckon I’ve been around a heap more than you and the Captain, and I see how foolish young folks can be.” He got to his feet, picked up the tray. “Sure you don’t want to eat anything? Supper ain’t gonna be much better, I’m afraid.”

She shook her head. He walked to the door, kicked it with his foot, and one of the men opened it and let him out. Then t closed, and she heard the sound of the key turning. Locked in again.

Dismally, she leaned her head against the window and stared down at the street. The crowds were thinning out due to the heat. There was nothing to look at anymore, so she went to the bed and laid down, thinking it was too hot to fall asleep.

Kitty opened her eyes. The room was dark. And it was cooler. For that much, she was grateful. Getting up, she hurried to the window to catch a breath of fresh air. Leaning out, she gulped, closed her eyes, felt the whisper of a breeze against her skin.

“Hello there!”