Smolder on a Slow Burn

by Lynda J. Cox

  He paused, looking down at Allison, waiting for her to meet his gaze. When she did, he asked, “Are you sure you want to hear the rest of this?”

  She worried her lower lip between her teeth before she slipped her hand into his again. “If you are all right with recounting it, I can listen. You’re the one who was forced to live it.”

  A.J. squeezed her fingers, marveling anew at the strength she possessed. “Taylor asked him for permission to speak freely with me. He begged me not to be a hero and not to be a damn fool, to just gather the information the Union wanted, allowing them to recover the missing payroll wagons and gold, and he swore on his mother’s grave he would get me out of there.

  “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I wanted to choke him to death with the chain on my shackles. Instead, I told him I would do as I had been ordered because I was honor bound to defend those men. They became my responsibility the moment we entered that camp. And then I told him that if we both survived, I would hunt him down and kill him and he could also take his promise to get me out of there and go straight to hell with it.

  “Before I’d been there an hour, I’d already broken the rule about insubordination and against profanity. To be sure that every man there knew who the absolute authority in that camp was, I was forced to run a gauntlet.”

  The recollection of trying to run through a corridor composed of twenty men armed with heavy wooden clubs, staggering and falling repeatedly from the blows choked him for a moment. “I don’t remember making it to the end.”

  He had to give her credit. Even though he felt her stiffen against him in horror, she hadn’t once interrupted him. He trailed off, wondering how much more to tell her.

  “Have you found him?” she asked when the silence had grown. The light coming in the opened door and through the damaged roof was almost daylight. Despite the ferocity of the storm overnight, meadowlarks and sparrows twittered in greeting the dawn.

  A.J. wondered for a moment which “him” she meant, and then he realized it was Taylor. He shook his head. “Not yet, but I gave up wanting to kill him a long time ago.”

  “Are you still looking for him?”

  “Yes, because there were things said that need to be righted. That’s why I was going to the Wyoming Territory. I had it from a reliable source Taylor was living there.” A.J. shifted on the hard ground. Allison kept her head on his shoulder. He drew another less than steady breath. “I later found out the five men he had executed at Rock Island to force my hand had already been condemned to death for killing four other men in the prison.”

  “Did you ever find out what the Union wanted you to report to them?”

  A.J. nodded. “It took almost nine months to put enough of the pieces together. I can tell you Oakten is not a patient man. One by one, those men involved disappeared from the camp, never to be seen again. By that time though, the men in the camp, including quite a few of the Union troops noticed that Oakten was finding infractions where none existed.”

  Just the mention of those non-existent infractions brought to mind the image of a small metal box and being forced into that box, sometimes for days on end. He suddenly had difficulty breathing and the walls of the soddy began to close in. Allison sat up, pulling her arm from him. He threw the groundcover and wool blanket off, gasping for air.

  “It’s okay,” he heard from what seemed to be miles away. “It’s okay. You’re not there.” Latching onto the sound of that soft voice made the walls gradually retreat. He became aware of Allison lightly stroking his upper arm. Easing back onto the saddle behind him, he lifted his arm, and gathered her into his side.

  He concentrated on the weight of her head on his shoulder, the warmth of her arm across his ribs, even her breath feathering across his chest and was startled to realize that focusing on those things leveled his own breathing out and slowed the frantic, maddened pace of his heart.

  A shiver skipped over her and without a word, he reached across and pulled the blanket over both of them. He wove his fingers through her long hair, marveling at the resilience of the woman curled into his side. “Anything else you want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  In what he knew to be a completely innocent gesture, she skimmed her palm along the curve of his ribs. Innocent or not, his breath caught at the back of his throat for an entirely different reason than before. He entwined his fingers with hers, halting the movement of her hand.

  “I can’t imagine you saying anything to him that needs to be righted, not in light of the manner in which he betrayed you. How can you possibly find anything to say to him that won’t include damning him to perdition? If anything he should be looking for you to attempt to amend the wrongs he did.”

  “Believe me, I wished him there many times but I don’t recall using the word ‘perdition.’” A.J. chuckled. “He did try to mend our relationship, because he came back to the prison twice. The first time he brought food that I promptly gave to the most starved of my men. The second time, almost a full wagon of rations arrived in the camp.

  “Oakten was furious, but Taylor had written orders from Grant. Apparently, we were still worth more to the Union alive than dead. Taylor oversaw the distribution and even though I knew he was trying to make amends, I refused the overture. However, I wasn’t stupid enough to refuse the fresh fruit, vegetables or less than rancid meat offered for my men.”

  He felt her lips curve in a smile against his shoulder.

  “On that second camp visit, Taylor also brought a new overcoat for me. Where in God’s name he managed to wrangle a Confederate cavalry officer’s overcoat with the correct rank I will never know. I immediately gave the coat to a boy of no more than twelve, a young regimental drummer who had been taken prisoner because he was riding with the detail for a payroll wagon. Taylor called me over and pointed out that if Jed was seen in a coat with officer’s insignia on it, he’d be summarily shot.

  “I made him give the coat back to me, ripped all the insignia off it, dropped it all into the mud, and gave the coat back to him. I then told Jed that he’d always been with a cavalry unit.” A.J. smiled with the recollection of the skinny boy in that coat. “After Jed walked away, Taylor offered to get me out of there, said that he could make the case I’d done as the Union wanted. I asked if he could get Jed out, too, because that was the only way I was leaving.

  “Even though I knew he couldn’t get Jed out, I had to ask.” A.J. trailed off, realizing most of this conversation felt like a session with his priest in the confessional. He hadn’t been in a confessional in more than ten years. Every time he forced himself to enter that small space, he’d been forced out before he could make his confession because of the way the walls closed in and made breathing impossible. Tonight the walls had tried to close in, but somehow, Allison cut through the unreasoning dread to pull him back from the brink.

  Allison pushed herself away and he followed her gaze. Great gouts of thick fog crept in the doorway. She shivered and quickly dragged her hands over her eyes. A.J. softly whispered, “I survived it. I wouldn’t ever want to do it again, but I survived it. You’ll survive this, too. I promise you that.”

  Chapter Eight

  What is left if honor is lost?

  ~Publilius Syrus

  Allison shook her head and stood, not caring that all she wore was his white linen shirt over her camisole and underslip. Somehow a sense of propriety didn’t seem well placed at the moment, not after spending part of the night sleeping in this man’s arms and then listening to the horrors he had survived.

  She wandered with slow steps to the doorway, looking out at a landscape shrouded in swirling fog so thick she couldn’t see more than five feet ahead. Even though she knew the sun had risen, the fog created a gloom that enveloped everything as far as the eye could see. The hailstones were slowly melting away, small wisps of fog rising from them.

  What an incredibly tiny world it was when she considered the man who destroyed her life was the very same man who had sha
ttered A.J.’s. She couldn’t stop a shiver that raced through her. She sensed A.J. standing behind her, close enough to touch her but not creating any contact.

  “What happened to Jed?” Somehow, what happened to that young boy seemed very important. Something good had to have come out of that hell. She had to know that something good came of the price that had been extracted and continued to be collected from A.J.

  Silence reigned behind her for a long time, broken only by the shuffling of the restless horses. At long last, his voice cracking, A.J. said, “I paid dearly for giving him that coat. One of Oakten’s men, a Captain Nathan Garrison, shot him near the dead line.”

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. “I was halfway across the camp when I heard the shot and by the time I got to him, he was dying. There was nothing anyone could have done for him. He said he heard the long roll and asked my permission to rejoin his regiment and drum the advance. I gave him the order to march forward and he died in my arms.”

  Apparently killing children was nothing new for Nathan Garrison.

  There was nothing she could say. Empty platitudes and expressions of sympathy wouldn’t take the break from A.J.’s voice or provide balm for the pain Jed’s death still inflicted. Without looking at him, never taking her gaze off the fog-shrouded landscape, Allison growled, “I want Gene Oakten brought to trial and hung. No, I just want him dead. I want to kill him.”

  “For that, I will forgo any claim to being a gentleman and tell you that I will be the one to pull the trigger on him.”

  “He killed my sister and her son.” Allison’s stomach twisted with knots so painful she felt sick. “Or at the least, ordered it. He was there the night our house was burned to the ground.”

  “So, he’s the one offering the reward for your return to Georgia.”

  “I think so. And, Nathan Garrison works for him.” Allison wondered if anything she said could startle him. He accepted the information with a level calm that was disconcerting.

  “Interesting. Oakten also killed my wife and my daughters very shortly after the War ended.” A.J. still hadn’t moved. “He must have believed I wasn’t totally truthful with him about where those payrolls were hidden. He went to my home looking for the gold and killed my family and took my youngest brother. I’m wondering now if he didn’t start those rumors about the lost gold himself.”

  Allison pivoted around. “I have one more question.”

  “Just one?” There was no doubt it had been a long night for him. His features were haggard with exhaustion, the soul-deep pain he still felt was evident in the lines of his face, and with several days of beard stubble, his cheeks looked more hollowed.

  “For now.” She looked back out over the landscape, staring into the swirling fog. “What happened when your men discovered that you were there just to turn those men who had any information about the payrolls, treasury, and blockade runners over to Oakten?”

  He released an explosive breath, turned from her and she heard his footsteps carry him to the horses. Allison looked over her shoulder to him. He had a hand on her jacket draped over Sugar’s back. “By the time the pieces were beginning to fit, I had several sergeants I trusted implicitly. They also trusted me. I confided in those sergeants and they were the ones who started gleaning the information from the suspected men. I merely carried the information to Oakten. As I was always in his sights for even the slightest infraction of the camp rules, it was no surprise I spent a lot of time getting dragged into and out of his office.”

  Allison had the uncomfortable thought that he had probably been literally dragged from Oakten’s office, even if he had walked into the man’s office under his own power. She said, “That little book I was reading wasn’t full of clap-trap. It was a sugar-coated version of the truth.”

  “The author of that little book, Dan Glasser, was the only other officer at Infernum when I was there and what he wrote is an attempt to glorify what I did. There was nothing glorious in trying to survive and keep my men alive and out of harm’s way.” He offered her a smile. “Your jacket, blouse, and skirt are dry. If I turn my back and promise not to look, again, could I have my shirt back and you can put your clothes on?”

  Allison nodded, understanding implicitly he needed to change the subject. Fifteen minutes later, Allison stood outside, shivering in the damp early morning while A.J. led both horses out of the soddy and before she could protest, he slipped his coat around her shoulders. “Put it on,” he said, brooking no argument.

  Allison tried anyway. “I’m not that cold and you’ll be very cold without it.”

  A wry grin twisted his mouth. “As much as I dislike being cold, I think we’ve established I’ve been a lot colder and I survived. Put my coat on until the sun burns off this fog and it warms up. Humor me, please.”

  Allison slid her arms into the sleeves and bit back a sigh with the warmth the wool offered. When he lifted her onto Dan’s back, even though her skirt rode up her legs, the length of the coat covered what the skirt no longer did. She waited for him to mount Sugar before she said, “I think your friend was right. You’re a hero.”

  He laughed. “No. I’m not sure I can handle another day of looking at your legs without destroying your belief that I am a gentleman or surrendering my honor.”

  Allison rode next to A.J., twisting over and over everything he had told her. Despite his cavalier attitude to his supposed honor, everything she had learned of him in the past few days said this was a man who wore that honor as comfortably as his own skin. He still carried a burden of guilt for the death of a child, a child he had attempted to keep protected from the harsh realities of a prisoner of war camp. When offered the opportunity to leave a living hell, he had refused because the men at Infernum had become his men and he saw their safety and protection as his responsibility. Death before dishonor was more than a creed or motto to most men in Southern society. The majority of the men she knew lived that belief.

  That creed of honorable manhood extended to their treatment of women, for the most part. Allison wasn’t foolish enough to believe that all men were honorable or that all those so-called honorable men viewed a woman of color in the same light as they would view her, but the majority of men she knew would never dishonor any woman. Gene Oakten was an anomaly and she knew that. If the hail storm had not created the chaos it did, she knew deep in her heart, that the moment she said “no” to him, A.J. would have retreated to the other side of the sod house. Reluctantly, perhaps, but he would not have pushed the issue.

  And that raised the question of whether or not she would have told him “no.” The recollection of his lips scalding her neck, of his tongue taking total possession of her mouth caused heat to creep into her face and she knew she was blushing. She ducked her head to study the pommel of the saddle.

  A.J.’s chuckle interrupted the twisting paths her thoughts took. “Miss Webster, may I hope I am the reason for that blush?”

  Allison jerked her head up. “It’s just the heat.”

  He smirked. It was the only word Allison could even think of to describe the expression crossing his face. “You, sir, are no gentleman if you doubt me when I tell you I am flushed from the warmth.”

  “Yep,” he said, tugging his hat lower on his head, and that smirk grew.

  Allison wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with her assessment he was not a gentleman or if he was mocking her protest. She huffed and finally glared at him. “Honestly, it was just a kiss.”

  “Just a kiss?” He reined in Sugar in and then said, “Dan, whoa.”

  The gray stopped. A.J. guided Sugar to her side, leaning closer to her. The heat flared up in her cheeks, adding to the earlier warmth. Devilment danced in the depths of his cobalt eyes and coupled with the wide smirk gracing his features. “I should kiss you again, and see if it really was ‘just a kiss’ or if you are just a terrible liar.”

  A veiled threat sounded in his words, as if a kiss could be used as a weapon. Yet even with that possible threat, t
he thought of him kissing her again settled warmth into her depths, caught her breath at the back of her throat, and sent her heart racing.

  He leaned closer and caught her chin in his palm. Allison moved into him, unable to catch her breath, anticipating his lips on hers. And, a moment later, without ever kissing her, he released her, touched his heels to Sugar’s sides and walked off. “You’re right. It was probably just a kiss and you’re flushed from the heat.”

  Allison stared after him, her mouth dropping open. Something like a yelp broke from her with her frustration. She kicked Dan but he wouldn’t move. She kicked again, but the horse still wouldn’t move. A moment later, A.J. whistled and the gelding started forward.

  Conflicting emotions raced through her: disappointment that he hadn’t kissed her again, frustration with herself for being so blatant, and confusion that it seemed he wasn’t in the least bit affected. At A.J.’s side she leaned out of the saddle and cuffed his shoulder, venting her irritation. “I reiterate that you are no gentleman.”

  Sugar stopped and Dan came to a halt, tossing his head. Allison understood the gray’s unmistakable frustration with all the starting and stopping.

  A.J. clasped a hand to his chest, fingers splayed. “Madam, you wound me. First you accuse me of not being a gentleman because you claim I doubted your word and now you compound the accusation of ungentlemanly behavior because I did not kiss you.”

  Allison met his gaze, the amusement dancing in his eyes causing a smile to ease over her face. “It was just a kiss, A.J. If you don’t want to kiss me, just say so.”

  The amusement drained from his face. He swung his leg over Sugar’s neck and slid to the ground between the two horses. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her from Dan. Before her feet touched the ground, she was wrapped in his arms, pressed completely to the firm length of his whole frame. His fingers wove into her hair, pulling her head back. “Stop selling yourself short, damn it,” he grated out, a moment before his mouth covered hers in a fierce, demanding possession.