Triumph (59 page)

“We just have to be grateful that it’s over; that it ended as it did,” he said softly, brushing her lips with a kiss.

Her eyes, so huge and dark against her delicate features, locked with his. “Can you really forgive me?”

“Can you forgive me?” he asked.

“I never betrayed you!” she whispered.

“You’re right. I was just a horse’s ass!”

She smiled slowly. Her arms wrapped around him. She drew his head down to hers. She pressed her lips to his, kissing him, slowly at first, sweetly. Then her lips formed to his, her tongue snaked along his, pressing entry, and her kiss became amazingly provocative. He kissed her back, parting her lips further, penetrating her mouth deeply with his tongue in return. Amazing what a kiss could do. He felt it straight to his groin, felt the hunger, the need, the time between them, the sudden desperation to touch more of her. He found the hem of her gown, slid his hand up the length of her bare legs, heard her soft gasp against his lips as his touch teased along her upper thigh ...

Then, abruptly, he pulled away from her, aware—too late—that they were not alone.

Weir hadn’t quite come up to them. He stood five feet away, a pistol in his hand. He had meant to reach them, Taylor realized, and press the gun straight to his temple. His uniform looked torn, ragged, slept in. Weir’s cheeks were dusky with a few days’ growth of beard. His eyes were wild. Red-rimmed, nervous, darting.

He had escaped
, Taylor realized,
by diving into the sea. He had come straight to them.

He had watched and waited until they were alone and absorbed with one another. He had meant to walk right up to the two of them—then pull the trigger. Then, so that Taylor’s blood and bone would shatter over Tia ...

Taylor leapt to his feet, dragging Tia up with him, pressing her behind him.

Weir had the advantage. Taylor had come here unarmed.

“Hello, there—Colonel!” he said contemptuously. “And Miss McKenzie—oh, excuse me, Mrs. Douglas. That’s right, you married him, but came to me. Well, well.”

“How did you get here, Weir?” Taylor demanded.

“Oh, Douglas! You do seem to think that you’re the only man who knows the woods, the streams, the oceans ... I grew up here, too, you red bastard. No, I don’t have the savage blood in me that makes a swamp rat, but I sure as hell can escape a knot, dive into the ocean, make the shore—and then find my way back here.”

“You escaped the ship,” Tia said.

“My love!” he exclaimed. “Nothing would keep me from you. Having a taste of all that is offered ... well, I simply hunger and pine for more.”

“Raymond Weir, you meant to kill my father. I loathe and despise you.”

“And you, Tia, are nothing but a strumpet and a whore,” Weir said. “Don’t fear. I don’t love you anymore, Tia. When I finish with you, there are armies out there who are welcome to you!”

“Call my wife a whore again, Weir, and I’ll kill you,” Taylor told him. He sounded confident. Fool. What the hell was he going to do? Weir held the cocked gun.

“Douglas!” Weir said. “By God, but I do despise you. Do you want her to die, too? Get away from her. I won’t kill you, Tia. I’ll just make you wish you were dead. You think you could make a fool out of me? Take down my men, and I would meekly go to prison and forget? Oh, no, my love. You want to be part of this war? You can pay the price of it as well.”

“This war is lost!” Taylor said. “Give it up, Weir. The South that you knew is dead and gone, never to come again.”

“Never!” Weir said. “The South is a taste and a feel, and it is honor—”

“Yes! The South can be a taste and feel of what is beauty and honor and graciousness. But you would take all that from her. You call yourself honorable?” Taylor demanded harshly.

“You don’t understand. The courage to kill McKenzie when others hadn’t the strength or power to pluck a viper from our nest is honor, sir! Now ... Tia! Ah, Tia! You beautiful, beautiful little
whore
, come to me.”

Taylor had only one chance. Maybe a stupid chance. But it was all he had.

He drew Tia from around him—astounded to hear her cry out and throw a thick handful of dirt into Weir’s eyes. Weir swore, reaching for his eyes.

Taylor catapulted hard against the man. His flying assault threw them both against the earth.

They struggled for the gun. He had Weir’s wrist, fighting for control.

There was a sudden explosion of sound. Raymond Weir went deadly still. Taylor looked into the man’s eyes as they glazed over.

The gun had gone off. The bullet had barely missed Taylor. It had lodged deep inside Weir’s head, taking Weir just as he had intended to take Taylor.

“Taylor!”

Tia screamed his name. She was at his side, and in his arms. He cradled her to him, and held her, and held her, and held her ...

It was some time later before they could get up and go back to the house, and have someone else go to the pool for Weir’s body. It would be some time, Taylor thought, before he would enjoy the pool again.

But not before he would love his wife.

The war had taught him the lesson that life was precious.

He had never learned it so thoroughly as that day.

That night, she touched him with a tenderness greater than any he had ever known. He made love to her with an equal, heartfelt fervor, passionate, forceful, and humbled.

For all the time that they could be together, he held her. Each night he made love to her.

Every moment, he thanked God for her.

Someday, they would have a real future, but ...

Time, like life, was precious. It slipped away far too quickly.

They both knew it. They cherished the moments they shared. They touched, they talked earnestly, they were passionate, they were tender ...

It wasn’t over.

Soon, he would have to leave.

There was one more skirmish in Florida, occurring in January of 1865. The Florida troops were victorious. Julian wrote Taylor that there had been little of a victory celebration then. The war was lost. To many, many men, it was far too obvious. Many wished they could walk away. Some deserted. Others could not walk away. They had to see it through to the bitter end.

Lincoln’s speech at his second inauguration spoke well of the man. He wanted peace, not punishment. He wanted to welcome the South back to the Union. “With malice toward none, and justice for all,” he said in his heartfelt, country manner of eloquence.

Grant was finally the man to win the war. He hammered at Petersburg, never giving up until the desperate city was forced to surrender.

The way to Richmond was open. The Southern capital was abandoned. The government ran.

Taylor was at Appomattox Courthouse the day Lee surrendered. He was able to salute his weary old friend as he gave up the battle, and the death. All around him, North and South, soldiers hailed him as one of the greatest generals ever to rise in America.
America
. They had been North and South. And now, again, they were Americans.

On the day that it ended, Taylor, Jesse, and Ian were able to meet up. In the next few days, they were able to find Brent and Mary. It was another few days before they were able to receive leave together and ride home.

At that moment, home meant Cimarron. To all of them. Sydney had gone there soon after Christmas, knowing that she had done all she could for the Underground Railroad, and that her mother and father would be there.

James and his extended family had traveled north after the events at Cimarron. It had seemed a time to be with family.

It was nearly the middle of April when they heard the news that Lincoln had been assassinated. It was a bitter blow. President Johnson might be a good man who would try, but the Congress would stand up against him. They would enter into a bitter struggle. Taylor was bitter himself, but not surprised; President Lincoln had seen his own death coming. He was legend now, a man greater than he had ever imagined himself to be.

A few days later, their long journey home was almost over. They had tried to find Julian in north Florida, since the last of the Florida troops had yet to surrender.

They learned he was at Cimarron.

When they arrived at the property, Julian was waiting in the parlor, having heard they were coming. “I have something for you,” he told Taylor.

And the bundle Julian carried was suddenly in Taylor’s arms.

“A daughter. If she’s anything like her mother, you’re in serious trouble. She was born the day we heard about the surrender. Tia named her Hope.”

He held his child, shaking. He found the strength to hold her more tightly, afraid that he would drop her. She had a head of dark, curly hair already, and huge, huge dark but multicolored eyes with just a touch of gold.

Taylor cradled his child to his heart, and took the stairs two at a time.

In his wife’s room, he fell to his knees at the bedside, and Tia touched his hair, threading her fingers through it, drawing his head to hers. She kissed him with tears, with love, with tenderness, with passion ...

And at last, with all the promise of a real future stretching before them ...

The land was torn. Beaten, scarred.

But peace had been declared.

And the healing could come at last.

“Hope?” Tia questioned softly.

“Hope,” he agreed. And kissed his wife again.

September, 1876

Cimarron

J
ARRETT MCKENZIE STOOD IN
the graveyard, one booted foot upon an old, weather-worn border stone. The sudden sound of a screech made him wince, but he smiled and shook his head as he did so. There had been a lot of screeches thus far—and there would be many more to follow. Tara had warned him it would be so when he had determined to invite the entire family for a post-Centennial Fourth of July celebration. That’s what happened when you had that many children about. Lord, how many of them were there now? They seemed to be all over the place, a new race of being, totally populating the lawn.

“Father!”

It was Tia coming toward him. Still delicate and tiny, despite the five little Douglases she and Taylor had contributed to the family tree.

All these years gone by ... and he still felt a special warmth in his heart when he saw his daughter. A daughter was definitely a man’s jewel, so he had determined with his son-in-law at the birth of Jessica Lyn—a girl after four boys. He adored his sons, he always would; he respected them now as men. But his daughter....

She was flushed, a bit breathless. He had watched her running with the younger children below on the lawn. She was delighted to be back, and with the children, having just returned from a long-planned trip to Egypt with Taylor. They had come home by way of New York and stopped at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia on their way home.

Tia’s excitement over the exposition was encouraging. War wounds were beginning to heal. More than a decade after the conflict, there were still huge slashes and scars from the bitter divide to mar the country. But most men wanted to look to the future—and peace.

“Father! Why are you standing up here in the cemetery? Mother wants to have birthday cake for the children.”

“Which children?” he teased.

“The September children,” she said with a laugh. Her dark eyes flashed with humor. She lifted on her toes, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. He slipped an arm around her. They looked down on the lawn together.

Young Anthony Malloy, the oldest of all the McKenzie third generation, was nineteen, and had just returned from classes in Tallahassee. Like his cousin Taylor Douglas, he wanted to be an architect, and he was seated at one of the picnic tables now with Taylor, who was making a point, building with the picnic ware.

Taylor had come home from the war to build many of the houses he had dreamed of creating. He claimed that his wife still loved her family home, Cimarron, above any mansion he had ever tried to build for her—and his brood.

Anthony seemed oblivious to the nearby teasing of his half-siblings, twins Ana and Ashley Long. Good-naturedly, he ruffled the girls’ hair as he listened to Taylor. Young master Sean McKenzie was not being so tolerant—when his sisters Ariana and Kelly sprayed him with water from the gardening hose, he turned on them with what might have been a vengeance, but helped by cousins Conar, Allen, and Tia’s oldest boy, Robert, they turned the tables on the girls, and the laughter and shrieking rose again, especially after they showered Risa, who was walking across the lawn with fresh lemonade.

Jerome had gone back into shipbuilding, he and Risa owned a marina—and even allowed Yankee tourists down to stay at one of the houses they kept on the beach. Ian had gone into politics, determined to see the state completely repatriated with all due dignity.

Julian and Brent continued to practice medicine. Sydney and Jesse remained in Washington most of the time. Jesse worked with the Pinkerton Agency, while Sydney pursued equal rights for all—men and women. But even Sydney and her brood had come south for this occasion. She sat with her father now, loathe to let go of James’s arm, even to show her baby sister, Mary, the correct way to hold yarn.

“There were times when I never thought that I would see such a day as this,” Jarrett said softly to his daughter.

“I know,” she said. “But we did survive it all, we survived it so well as a family! Thanks to you, and Uncle James, of course.”

“We were at odds throughout the war.”

“We were all at odds. But you taught us all something we never forgot.”

“Oh? And what is that?” he asked, turning to his daughter.

“Love,” she said, smiling, and her dimples showed, and he thought again that she was, indeed, his treasure.

“Love, hm. Well.”

She laughed. “Courage ... perseverance! And we made it and oh, Father! You can’t begin to imagine the things we saw at the exposition! Dual telegraphs, telephones! New steam engines, new ideas, air-conditioning, motor-vehicles ... oh, some of them we won’t really see, for years, of course, but the prototypes are out there.”

“Your children will see it all,” he told her.