Triumph (58 page)

There was a gunboat out on the river. Men were loading rifles, manning the single cannon.

Behind him, he suddenly heard Tia leap down from Friar. “Mother!” she shrieked, and she was gone, racing across the lawn.

“Tia!” He thundered in warning, just as he saw Tara McKenzie hurrying across the lawn to her husband’s side, ready to duck beneath the earthworks. But the Rebel soldiers had learned to use their Enfields swiftly in this war. The fire could come too fast.

“Tia!” He shouted her name again. She had reached her mother. Throwing herself against her, Tia meant to bring them both down to the ground.

Taylor heard the volley of fire.

And they were both down.

He raced to her like the wind. The Rebs on the river were getting ready for a second volley of fire.

He drew his guns, sliding to his knees beside his wife and her mother. He started to fire rapidly, buying time to move the women. He felt her eyes. She was looking at him. He bent over her, trying to assess the damage. She reached up, touching his cheek. Her eyes closed. “Tia!”

There was blood on her shoulder. He didn’t know where the bullet had ripped through her, only that at least it hadn’t struck too close to her heart. Tara groaned, trying to rise.

“Down!” he warned. By then, Jarrett McKenzie, his face a mask of fury and concern, was down beside him. And Julian followed.

Jarrett was lifting Tara. “We’ve got to get them back to the house,” he said gruffly.

Taylor started to lift Tia. Julian reached for his sister; he met Taylor’s eyes. “Taylor, let me take her. You might know something about bullet wounds, but not as much as I do. And I’m a damned good shot, but you’re better. You can cover us.”

He wanted to be with her; more than anything he had ever wanted in his life, he wanted to be with her. But Julian was right. Julian was a doctor. He was not. He was a crack shot.

If she died, he didn’t want to live!

The thought passed through him. No, he wasn’t going out there to kill himself. He was going out there to end this thing.

So that he could go back to her.

He heard his men arriving behind him. Reinforcements. This could be over quickly; they even had Rebel forces on their side. Sometimes, even in the middle of war, men knew the difference between right and wrong. “Taylor!” Julian gave him a shake. “Keep those bloody bastards out of my house so I can tend to my mother and sister!”

He nodded to Julian, rose, and running along the earthworks, started to fire. The cannon suddenly exploded, shattering the dock. Dirt and dust blew everywhere. Running along the dirt, he found Ian’s position. Ian didn’t know what had happened to his mother and sister. Taylor decided it wasn’t the time to tell them.

“Barrage them!” Taylor exclaimed. “I’m going for the cannon!”

Despite the earth and powder that filled the air around them, Ian saw his intent. If he could get to the gunboat and disable the one cannon, the main threat was over. He nodded. He called out orders to his men. “You’ll have to watch out for friendly fire.”

Guns fired in a continual fury from the shore line, striking the gunners in the boats and the foot soldiers in the fields beyond. Taylor shed his boots and jacket and slipped down by the ruined dock. He dived into the water, keeping low. He could hear the spitting, soaring sounds as bullets whipped by him in the river. He dived more deeply. When he came up behind the gunboat, he saw that the defenders had done their work well.

The boat held numerous corpses. He walked low and silently across the deck to the single gun. When the Rebel cannoneer went to load the weapon, he drew his fist back and caught the man with a deadly right hook. The man fell. A second gunner was drawing a pistol to shoot him. Taylor caught the man’s arm, twisted it, and the gun fired into the fellow’s gut. Another man flew across the deck at him, bearing a naval cutlass. Taylor dodged the flight, allowing the man to pin himself into the wooden body of the vessel. Then he threw the man overboard, still using the impetus of the man’s flight. He heard something behind him and turned. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He would have been run through by a man with a rapier, but the Rebel merely stared at him, then fell, shot from the shoreline.

Taylor quickly overstuffed the cannon and lit the wick. With only seconds, he dived into the water and swam as hard as he could. He was still beneath the water when he heard the explosion. It rocked him toward the shoreline with a massive catapulting action, then sucked him back. For a minute, he thought that, after all this, he was going to drown. Then he found the surface, broke it, and stumbled on to the embankment.

He lay there in the night, feeling the damp earth beneath him. He gasped for breath. He opened his eyes and looked up. An unknown Rebel soldier stood above him. The man grinned, reaching a hand down to him.

“Colonel, sir, that was one of the most remarkable acts I’ve ever seen! And they say that we’re better soldiers and better strategists!”

Taylor just stared at him for a moment. Then he grinned with relief as well. “Unfortunately, sir, most of the time you are. If you weren’t so damned good, this wretched war could have been over long ago.”

“Let me help you to the house, sir,” the soldier said. Taylor saw that he had one good leg and one wooden leg. “Name’s Liam, sir. At your service.”

He was up, facing the man. The boat on the river continued to burn, adding to the red haze of the night. Men were racing around, stopping by the injured, assessing the damage and the situation.

“It’s over?” Taylor queried.

“It’s over.”

Taylor nodded, and turned instantly for the house. He ran across the lawn, up the porch steps, and into the entry. Still dripping and muddied, he burst into the parlor.

He saw Tia first. Pale as a ghost, laid out on the Victorian sofa. Sheets covered her; she didn’t move. A black woman was at her side.

He walked across the room, his heart in his throat. He looked at the black woman, and sat down by his wife.

“Tia ...”

Her eyes opened. “Taylor?” she whispered.

“I’m here.” He took her hand. “It’s over Tia, it’s over. Your father is safe. Cimarron is safe.”

She squeezed his hand back. “
You’re safe!
” she whispered.

Her eyes closed again.

“Tia!”

“She’s all right!” he heard from the doorway. Julian was back. “Flesh wound, Taylor. She caught it in the upper arm. If she hadn’t deflected the bullet, though, my mother might have died. Tia will probably have a nasty scar, but then, when this is all over, we’re all going to have some nasty scars, inside and out.”

“But she’s unconscious,” Taylor said.

“A touch of laudanum. It must have hurt like a bitch when I was sewing her up. And she was making me crazy, insisting she had to see Mother. You know your wife.”

Yes, he knew his wife.

And she would make him insane forever with her spirit and courage and determination.

But then, that was partly why he loved her so very much.

T
HREE DAYS LATER, TAYLOR
walked down to the spring pool that was just through the woods on the McKenzie property. Julian had told him that Tia had gone there. It was the family reflecting pond, he said, glancing toward his older brother. “In fact, Ian looked in the water there once, and found Alaina.”

“Very amusing, little brother,” Ian said.

“Little! I think I have half an inch on you, Ian!” Julian told him.

Taylor grinned, leaving the two on the porch. The bullet that had grazed Tia’s arm had lost its impetus and had stopped short of doing any serious damage to Tara, breaking her skin and lodging in the flesh just below her collarbone. Julian had dug it out quickly and easily. Tara had lost a lot of blood, but today, for the first time, she was feeling strong. She knew she couldn’t hold her family at home much longer, so she wanted to be with her sons while she could. Most of the Union soldiers had already returned to their posts, Ian’s men traveling back across the peninsula, Taylor’s recruits taking the prisoners who had survived the attack at Cimarron on the ship north. Julian’s band of orderlies and injured remained, while Ian had added men to his own operations, just in case the war should come home again. Taylor doubted that it would; only a personal vendetta had brought Weir’s troops here. The South didn’t have enough men left anymore to waste on a private war.

He still had days left himself, days given to him by President Lincoln.

He had wasted a few of those precious days dealing with military matters, cleaning up the dead at Cimarron, sending men and prisoners on. And though he had sat with Tia, he hadn’t gone to her room at night yet, and they hadn’t really talked. Once she was up herself, she spent her time with her mother. And he hadn’t dared get too close to her until Julian had assured him that her arm was healing very nicely.

Once he had felt that he couldn’t afford to take time from the battlefield, even when time had been offered to him; the war effort needed him. Now, he needed the time, and the war effort would go on without him.

As he walked to the pool, he paused for a minute to close his eyes. Home. This was home to him, this warmth. A touch, just a touch, of a winter’s chill in the air. The whisper of a palm, bending in the breeze. The cry of a heron.

Yes, it was nearly winter, but still the days were warm and beautiful, the sun brilliant. The pines, oaks, and palms offered a gentle relief from the heat of the sun as he headed toward the pool. When he had reached the copse, he saw Tia there. She sat on a log, dangling her bare feet into the cool spring water. She wore a soft blue-flowered cotton gown, with the full length of her hair untied and sweeping around her. She appeared very young, like a little nymph, a water sprite. But when she turned toward him, her dark eyes were far older, and the tension in her beautiful features betrayed the strain she had been under.

He walked to the log and sat down beside her.

“So this is the McKenzie reflecting pool,” he said after a moment, aware that she was watching him.

“It is. It’s my favorite place here,” she said, and he heard her voice tightening. “I love it. I love the birds, and the water—the fresh water, and the river and the sea beyond. I love the heat, and the breezes, and the days and the nights and ... Taylor, thank you. I ...” She turned and looked at him. “Cimarron means a lot to me. But ... but it wasn’t the property that made me do what I did. My father has always taught us that there is no
thing
, no object in the world that is worth a man’s life. I went to Weir thinking I could stall him. I didn’t have anything planned. I ...”

She didn’t finish. She looked away.

“Taylor, why did you send me away?” she asked him.

His heart shuddered and squeezed. “Because you wanted to go home.”

“I wanted to be home,” she whispered. “But not away from you.”

“Every time I made love to you,” he said harshly, “it was as if I forced a burden on you. You told me you didn’t want children.”

“I was afraid! But I—I was glad that you were impatient with my fears. My God, Taylor! You must have known how I felt!”

“I know that you cried!”

“Because ... because I needed you so much, and you ...” Her voice trailed. She stared at him. “Well, when you came to the Ellington place, and then let me ride with you—”

“I was an idiot! See what happened.”

She smiled. “I’m all right, and my mother is all right. I had to be here, Taylor. That was fate maybe. But you—you could have stopped me. And I said that I’d do whatever you wished—afterward. And I’ll keep my word to you, Taylor. I’ll go wherever you want—lock myself into prison, if that’s your wish.”

He stared at her a long time. Then he grimaced in return. “Tempting!” he said softly.

“You mean ... you ...” She hesitated, looking away again. “Taylor, another man might have cut my throat that night. I assume that, at the very least, you must want a divorce now.”

“True, another man might have been really tempted to skewer you!” he reflected, picking up and throwing a pebble, then watching it skip across the surface of the water. He turned to her again. “But a wife without a throat does not do a man much good.”

She looked at him again. “Wife ... but Taylor ...”

“We both made a commitment, Tia. I said I wouldn’t let you out of it. And I won’t.”

“And as for prison?” she whispered softly.

“I think your mother is going to need you here for a while,” he said.

He felt her eyes, felt the heat and amazement in the way she looked at him. Then, suddenly, he was pitching off the log, totally unprepared as she threw herself at him. “Taylor, oh, my God, Taylor ...”

He would have to learn never to underestimate her. She straddled him this time, her hair falling all over him, teasing his nose, making him sneeze. Then her lips were on his, sweet with passion, salty with tears. She kissed him, and kissed him, and then he heard her whisper, “Taylor, thank God, thank God. I didn’t want our baby born in a prison.”

Baby.

He still had the strength. He rose swiftly, pinning her beneath him. “What?”

“Sometime in April, I believe,” she said. Then her eyes watered again. “Oh, Taylor, I swear that it’s ours ... yours. I ... love you. I think I started loving you when I met you, you aggravated me so badly, being so damned certain that you were right, being a ...”

“Yankee?” he supplied.

“But you just wouldn’t act badly, you were always so ... well, determined, but honorable. Passionate ... but honorable.”

“You didn’t want children!” he said hoarsely.

“I was afraid, so afraid!” she whispered. “I’m still afraid. So much bad happens, but then, you should see the new little McKenzies, they’re so wonderful ... so beautiful ... I do want our baby, Taylor. So very much. And I was afraid again, afraid that taking the bullet the way I did might cost us our child, but then again, I couldn’t have watched my mother die ... and I’ve been thinking, Taylor, and I was so wrong, but if I had to go back ... I couldn’t have let my father die either.”

He smoothed her hair from her face. And he understood, and he should have understood her so long ago. No. He couldn’t have done anything other than fight for the Union. And she never could have allowed either of her parents to be harmed.