Surrender the Wind (9 page)

“Where’s he from?” Dinkle demanded and glared at Rourke.

Not desiring to create a worse scenario than was already starting, Catherine warned Dinkle. “You better leave…his condition, gets riled awful easy. Never can tell what will happen.”

Thirty paces out, Elias thrust out his chest. “He’s as ornery and nasty as a stinking Reb.”

John started toward Dinkle.

Dinkle made fast tracks to his wagon, whipping his team around. His carriage tipped on sidewheels, slammed on all fours, and then disappeared in a huff of dust. Fuming, Catherine walked past John.

He blocked her, a broad, unsmiling barrier. “I want some questions answered.”

“Let me pass.” She hissed, and he took hold of her arm.

“Damn you, Catherine, where were you all evening?”

Lifting her chin, she stared mutinously into his eyes. “I was at a church dance.”

“With that pile of…” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t even give him the rank of humanity.”

“You’ve been drinking. Apparently you also like the flavor of wheat and barley.” She smelled it on his breath, so let the accusation snake around him. “As it stands, I have you to thank for compromising me.”

“Looked to me, like your reputation was well on its way. Do you realize…that Elias Dunghill—”

“Dinkle. I had the situation well under control.” She jerked her arm. He wouldn’t let go.

“I believe, Miss Callahan you would have been in desperate straits had I not intervened. You have thrown yourself in with dangerous company.”

She glowered at him. “I don’t doubt that for one second.” Kicking Rourke with everything she had, she caught him in the shin. Pain reverberated from her toes up her leg. Had she broken her foot? Why he didn’t budge. He bent low, catching her in the midriff and throwing her over his shoulder.

“Put me down you son of a cur…you unsired son of a chamber-pot maker.” To split him open with every curse her Irish maid, Brigid, had ever championed.

“Be quiet woman!” He dipped extra low through the doorway. She slipped, the floor loomed. She screamed, and he chuckled, righted her on his shoulder, his hand smacking her bottom. “This is such a charming position.”

“Oh-h-h.”

He tossed her on the bed, and she rubbed her behind where it smarted.

“Now, answer my question.” He crawled across the bed and chucked her under the chin with his finger. Why did you leave with that harebrained imbecile?”

Catherine sat up, and sniffed, refusing to answer him. His lashes fell with a lazy nonchalance. How she relished challenging him.

“Do you know how many times I looked at that clock concerned over your disappearance? When it came to well past midnight, and you had not returned…one nightmare after another crossed my mind. To my complete frustration and disbelief, you’ve been tapping your toe at a church social?”

Catherine had no answer for him. When his jaw clenched, a slight tremor traveled up her spine and her misgivings of defying him increased by the second.

“That buffoon assaulted you. Even more ridiculous is your idiotic denial of the incident…had the situation under control. Why did you run away?”

Before he finished his last question, she knew he had guessed her reasons, saw it in the myriad of emotions that crossed his face, and then losing all his fury. He became drowsy, his gaze roving downward to her…lips.

The touch of his lips was a tempting sensation—a kiss as tender and light as a summer breeze. She felt drugged by his earthy scent intermingled with whiskey. John placed both his arms on each side of her, forcing her back upon the pillows with an even more demanding kiss. She opened her mouth to say something, but the words died as his mouth covered hers.

Her vow not to become involved with him was like an old wound that ached on a rainy day. The harder she tried to overlook the truth, the more it refused to go away. Her world whirled and skidded. Too fast. W
hat had become of her?
There was no future with this Reb. He would go on his merry way, back to war, leaving her with nothing but a broken heart. She would be the loser, for he offered her nothing.

Catherine thought about the very striking and startling sides of the general, and she wasn’t at all clear she understood who he actually was. She had nursed him back to health and seen him when he was most vulnerable. He could prick her ire easily, enraging her at times, but always manage to make her laugh. He was intelligent and wise, compassionate and strong. He regaled her with amusing stories of his family and in quiet moments like now, kiss her insensibly with an arousing passion and tenderness she had never before imagined. Despite the gentleness he always showed to her, she suspected that it wasn’t always the rule. Tonight she had seen a dangerous side in him when Elias Dinkle had assaulted her, and easily entertained the notion that the general was not a man to be trifled with. She even had a stronger notion that anyone who dared to cross him would create a very dangerous enemy. Pushing hard against his solid chest, she stopped him.

He expected a full explanation. Taking a deep breath, she plunged forward. “I cannot be taken in like other women you have had. I am not like that.

He threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Are you jealous?” He fell back on the bed alongside her, his shoulders shaking.

He didn’t seem at all disappointed or concerned by her assertion.

Taken aback by his amusement from her grave confession, she twisted to leap off the bed, but John grabbed her wrist in a vise-like grip. “You think to make fun of me. Well get this in your thick head, general, you are no better than Dinkle. In fact, I’d put him a notch above you, and if you think I am going to put up with the likes of you, you might as well hightail it out of here, for I’ll scream to high heavens and have the whole Union Army on your trail.”

“Would it help if I told you Molly was my dog?” His sudden lazy grin and the truth of what he said made her pulses leap.

“Your dog?” He had been taunting her. A smile found its way to her lips. “You are incorrigible.”

His expression stilled and grew serious. “And as far as other women, there are none that compare to you.”

John yanked her down and into his arms before she could waiver again. He laughed richly, triumphant at her gasp of utter astonishment. Before she could protest, he kissed her, this time his mouth covered hers hungrily, demanding, his tongue tracing the soft fullness of her lips. When she sighed, it made him roll her on her back, demanding more as he devoured her sweetness. When she reached up and caressed the sides of his face, his breath caught…and his heart melted.

He steeled himself against the onslaught of emotions. Like when he had her plastered up against the barn, all common sense fled. He moved his hands under her neckline and palmed the fullness of her breasts, stroking the creamy mound of flesh, her nipples hardening from his touch. She groaned softly and his control snapped as she curled into the curve of his body, already rigid with desire.

In a span of a second, she tore her mouth from his, demanding desperately that he stop. And then the last thing he expected, iced him. She began to cry. He sank down on the bed beside her, baffled.

“Shawn. Did you?”

He let out a loud breath, yet understanding the pain of losing her brother. “What battle was he lost in?”

“Battle at Brandy Station. Shawn had gone through the war without as much as a scratch. He was serving with the Seventh Calvary, Army of the Potomac. You see it was supposed to be a slight demonstration…but Shawn was caught in the thick of an ill-advised maneuver and was….” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. “Union Cavalry completely exposed to Confederate forces…it was seven months ago.”

John clasped his hands behind his head. His instinct reared. Her brother populated an unmarked grave. How to break it to her? “I wasn’t there. I was farther south on a detail for Lee.”

“Thank you,” she said, relief mirrored in her face that he was not the one who possibly killed her brother. “I don’t believe he’s dead. I’d feel it. He’s just missing. It’s an eerie, uncanny feeling that I cannot explain. Perhaps some southern woman is caring for him like I’ve cared for you. There has to be some sense of higher powered justice in the world.”

“If you say so.” He was suddenly tired. His mind burned with memories of the war. He’d seen too many battles, too many dead men. Bodies were thrown into mass graves or the injured, seeking refuge, crawled under tree falls and died. He didn’t want to think about it.

The room became silent, their gazes locked and the tension in the air lay palpable. John’s lips twisted into a cynical smile, the force of his voice unleashed his great disgust. “The biggest farce of war is to determine who is right but only too late to realize who is left. However, I have the wisdom to hate war. To genuinely despise it. Only fools crave war. The fools caught in their triumphant majesty manipulate, puppet and design we lesser creatures for their own selfish gain. And afterward the fools are left with their cruel armies—armies of cripples, armies of widows and orphans, armies of thieves and in their horrendous wake, an army of dead.”

Observing her assessing him, John understood she was trying to make sense of his assertion. He knew how absurd that assertion would seem to her, knowing his history. He understood her repugnance of the maiming, killing and the aftermath of war. He waited for her chastisement or scorn. He would understand immediately—he intuitively knew her thoughts.

She lingered. “Your logic and your humility have struck an inner chord. Your wisdom, respect for life and for peace are aimed directly at my heart. How contrary? A man of war, a leader of many battles…a man of peace?”

She took his hand, the soft pad of her thumb, smoothing across his knuckles. “I understand the truth and pain of your words, garnered from hard-bitten experience, and lived through your soul.”

She placed her hands on the sides of his face, her trembling fingers stroking his cheeks. Softly, and with complete sincerity, she whispered, “I believe you are a great man, General Rourke, noble beyond distinction.”

The gentle touch of her fingers, and the look in her eyes cemented his resolve. Just days ago he was fighting for the Confederacy, the Cause, and beyond a world he could only imagine, fortune had brought them together. But it was the warmth and reverence of her words that was his undoing. Cautiously, deliberately slowing his alacrity, John moved her gently, sheltering her intimately in his arms, content with the wild beating of her heart upon his side.

It was the most extraordinary torment. He laid stiffly as she stroked his chest, then grabbed her hand to end her simple exploration before something started that he wouldn’t be able to rein in. Glancing down upon her silken head, her hair fanned out across his chest in golden splendor, brought warmth to his heart. The whole world could be damned. She was his.

Yet she was afraid to get involved with a Confederate general who had nothing to offer her except a nebulous future. Looking beyond the war, at the what ifs, John envisioned with perfect clarity, everything he could offer her. Wealth, status, a home—a family. In his mind, he saw her in silks and satins sitting on the porch of his beloved home, Fairhaven, laughing and with several children at her feet.
Their children.
But the dream was a fanciful castle in the sky, far from his reaches.

Her eyelashes swept down upon her cheeks, long and sooty, and he watched the rise and fall of her breasts, warm, full, enticing. She sighed then, and nestled her face into his chest. He grabbed the blankets, covering them both, reached up and turned down the light. Would he get any sleep? He wasn’t a saint.

The bedroom door banged open with a shot. John shielded Catherine with his body and cursed for he had allowed an intruder into the house unaware. Standing in the doorway stood a man a score older than his father, a wizened complexion and white, wild hair. Looking as if he walked from the high mountains of Donegal, the man’s blazingly keen, gray eyes bored holes into John, missing nothing and taking in everything. John might have been wary except for the Roman collar strapped to the man’s neck and long black flowing cassock. This was Catherine’s uncle.

“What the devil is the meaning of this?” boomed the priest in a thick, commanding Irish brogue.

At the crack of his voice, Catherine pulled the bed sheet up to her neck, although she didn’t need to for she was fully dressed. Being found entwined with a strange man in her bed was going to take a lot of explaining. John observed her high color as she swallowed hard trying to squeak out a feeble answer. “It’s not what you think, Uncle Charlie.” She squirmed beneath the priest’s accusing glare.

Her uncle shook his fist at them, his stout body trembling as if shaken by some inner wind. “It is a sorrowful sight laid out before me. Don’t you be telling me what to think Catherine. I do believe my very eyes.”

John lounged, amused. Fortunately, he had the grace to appear compliant, for in Father Charles Callahan’s eyes, he was a fox caught in a henhouse. What was more entertaining as Father Callahan thundered and stormed, was witnessing Catherine on the defensive. Hands down it was easy to discern where she inherited her temper.

“I’ll be waging with the Lord Almighty that my dear departed sister, your sweet mother is rolling in her grave! And to think of you carrying on with these shenanigans. And who do I receive the good news from? Why Dinkle himself. He made a beeline for me at the railroad depot this morning when I stepped off the train, sporting his newly acquired shiner.” He darted a scathing glance at John. “I’ll assume you are the donor.”

Without affirmation, he blustered on. “And then Dinkle went on to say my niece had a visit from her mad cousin.” He glared at John. “I’ll assume you are the mad cousin.”

John inclined his head. There was nothing more than to let matters come to a head.

Insultingly enough, Father Callahan inspected him—the man who dared to be in bed with his niece. “Were you really dropped on your head? You don’t look as if you were dropped on your head, but Dinkle said you were. I don’t know where he got that impression,” said Father Callahan.