“Hurry before I awake,” she moaned in anticipation, “Travis, hurry, please.”
He didn’t want to take her. No, he wanted to get up, to leave her lying there on fire with desire for him, to laugh at her prostrate form and then throw her across the horse and take her to her father. And then he would ride the hell out of her life forever. But she was there, naked beneath him, begging him to take her—and he wanted her, God, how he wanted her as he’d never wanted a woman before. She was everything a man could want. He felt as though his loins were filled to the point of bursting. He had to have her, despite the promises he’d made to himself to remain in complete control once they were together. Damn it to hell, he had to have her!
Plunging into the velvet recesses of her moist, receptive body, Travis felt himself exploding at once—and Kitty twisting in spasms of pleasure. It was over quickly, and it was just as well. He withdrew and then fumbled with his clothing, hating himself for his weakness.
And Kitty was pulling at her own clothes, cursing herself, cursing him. Animals. That’s all they were and ever had been to each other. Animals.
“Let’s get going.” He sounded miserable. “Your father is probably worried sick over what’s happened. And we’ve still got to get around those Rebs so the Indians will stop looking for us there.”
He led her back to the horse. Anything, Kitty thought feverishly, talk about anything but the animal lust between us.
“Tell me about the war,” she said quietly, once they were plodding through the snow once again. “I haven’t heard a word for months. I hope you Yankees are getting soundly whipped,” she added caustically.
He snorted. “Now how can you say that, sweet lady, when your own father is one of the best Yankee soldiers around these parts? And especially after young Andy Shaw took the oath to the Union and died for it.”
“Poppa has his reasons for doing what he’s doing. And Andy was too young to know and understand what it’s all about.”
“Hell, Kitty, you don’t even know yourself.”
“I know that my heart belongs to the South and always will. And as proud as I am to be seeing Poppa once again, I want to go home, back to North Carolina. I hope you won’t try to stop me because I’m going to keep trying to escape.”
“Hell, I don’t want you around me messing up my life! The last thing I need is some bossy, half-crazy woman. But don’t be sure you can make it home. The war is picking up speed.”
A prickle of apprehension moved along her spine as he began to tell her the news that she had been unable to hear for so long, the news she actually did not want to hear.
Travis told her about. how, during the last week of November of last year, 1863, Grant, with General Tecumseh Sherman as his strong right arm, had avenged a previous Federal defeat at Chickamauga by trouncing General Braxton Bragg and his Confederates at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in the state of Tennessee. Now the Union army was going to start an advance toward the -South, Grant’s goal being to destroy the southern part of the Confederacy piece by piece.
He told her how supplies of all kinds had been growing shorter and shorter for the Confederacy, especially after England finally took a firm stand in favor of neutrality. As a result, loans from England had promptly dried up. And the South, lacking the necessary funds, was finding it more and more difficult to get goods from Mexico.
“We’ve heard that Grant’s been given command of all the Union armies,” he went on. “And now he’s going straight ahead with plans to invade the South and crush it once and for all. If you’re smart, Kitty, you’ll sit it out, because it can’t last much longer.”
“Sit it out where?” She was close to tears. “You think I can sit back and watch the Confederacy fall? It makes me want to take up arms and join the fight, too. But I can’t do that, can I? Because I’m a woman! I can ride and shoot as well as most men, but because I’m a woman, I’m expected to sit safely behind the lines and tear petticoats into bandages. Well, no thank you. I’ll escape if you try to hold me prisoner and I’ll find a Confederate brigade and I’ll join them as a nurse and…” Tears were streaming profusely down her face now and the wind was turning them into droplets of ice. Not because she wanted to, but because of the chill, Kitty once again pressed her face against Travis’s back.
They rode along in silence for a few moments and then he said quietly, “For a girl who professes to love her father so much, I can’t understand your loyalty to the South when he so obviously sees no reason to stand up for it. Maybe it’s not your patriotic juices flowing at all, Kitty. Maybe it’s your Reb boyfriend, Nathan Collins.”
“Maybe it is,” she said, more to herself than to him. “Maybe I’m just now understanding how I really do feel about everything.”
Stiffening, raising her head once again, she said, “Please, just take me to my father, let me make sure he’s well, and then I want to be on my way. I don’t want to be around you any longer than necessary.”
She didn’t care whether she believed the words or not. They had to be spoken. Travis Coltrane loved no one but himself and his precious war. He had used her, violated her, and at the moment she didn’t know whom she hated most, him for what he had done or herself for not being strong enough to withstand the power he exercised over her body. She had wanted him, damnit, wanted him with every fiber of her being. And she had enjoyed his lovemaking—if it could be called love. Animals. They were merely animals mating out of need and lust, and not love. And just his very presence at this moment, the warmth of his body permeating into her own, was overwhelming. Get away from him. That’s what she had to do. Get away, as far away as possible. Never see him again. Control the animal instincts of her body. There could be no denying that she had sensed only joy over seeing him again, knowing he was still alive after months of not knowing. And ecstasy. There had been only painful ecstasy moving through her loins as he took her so savagely. Just remembering the waves of passion made her tingle instinctively. It was physical attraction: the male seeks out the female to mate. And since he made her so weak, the only way to control it was to get away from him at any cost.
He laughed, a low, guttural sound that infuriated her. “You want to get away from me, pretty baby, because of the hold I have on you. There’s no denying you enjoyed what we just did. Tell me, did you enjoy it with the Indian braves, too? I hear Indians don’t waste time with the pleasurable preliminaries—the kisses, the touching, and you glory in them. You…”
She began to beat on his back with her fists, crying, “Damn you, Travis Coltrane, I hate you! You make a woman want you. You have hundreds of ways you’ve learned in the brothels, no doubt.”
He reined up the horse, sliding off once again, jerking her down. She reached to slap his face, but he caught both her wrists, holding her, shaking her. “Now get this straight, you little spitfire,” his steel-gray eyes gleamed and glittered in the moonlight reflected upon the snow-covered ground, “you’re nothing to me, understand? You’re just another whore! A Southern whore! The worst kind! I want to get you to your daddy and let him send you home or wherever the hell you want to go, but you get off my back, you hear? I’ve had my fill of you! The only reason I even agreed to go after you was because of your father. I happen to respect and like him. He isn’t like you, thank God.”
“And you aren’t like him and never could be!” Her face twisted into an angry grimace, but even in anger, Travis noted, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. “I should have married Nathan. He’s a gentleman. Something you can never be!”
“A gentleman?” He raised an eyebrow, that crooked smile appearing that never ceased to infuriate her. “Let’s see, a gentleman is one who fornicates with the lights off, right? I don’t think you’ll enjoy that, pretty baby. I’ve seen the way you sneak looks at my body beneath those long lashes of yours.”
“Ohhhh!” She struggled to get away, but he held her tightly.
“Now get on that horse and keep your mouth shut the
rest of the way or I’ll let you walk behind like the squaw you’ve turned into!”
He let her help herself onto the horse, and if he hadn’t reached out and snatched the reins and held them, she would have kicked the horse into a run through the snow, leaving him behind. But Travis had foreseen what she planned. Laughing, he mounted himself and they rode on through the night in silence.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The one-eyed man sat next to the young girl. Her long golden-red hair moved gently about her face in the early spring breeze. Below them lay the winter camp, spread out on the sloping hillside. There were several thousand tents and lean-tos, and huts thrown together and crudely made from logs, rocks, blankets, canvas, saplings, mud, and string. Some had squat chimneys of mud and stone. Sharp, distinctive noises emanated from the life going on within the camp—a cavalry horse nickering, a bell ringing somewhere, the distant note of a bugle, an artillery mule braying, dogs barking, the plodding of horses’ hoofs, a belch, an angry curse, and a short scuffle with fists. A train approached, bells tolling, bringing in more soldiers to the sprawling city of men and animals and tents and huts.
The April sunshine peeked through the clouds momentarily, then receded once again, casting a sheen of gloom over the camp, an appropriate shading for the invisible air of tension and apprehension that touched each inhabitant’s heart. The Federal war machine was moving into high gear. General Grant’s master plan of attacking the South was moving right along. General Sherman had taken over command of the western forces and Federal drives in both the East and West would now proceed from one consistent strategy; Attack simultaneously at all points to apply constant pressure on the ever-weakening Southern states. But recent news had cast a depressed cloud over the North. While Grant and Sherman mapped out the details for their joint offensive, a third Federal force had met defeat when General Nathaniel Banks and forty thousand troops and fifty ships started up the Red River on March 14th, attempting to gain control of Louisiana and East Texas, to counteract threats from Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, and to seize large stores of cotton. The expedition had been a failure.
And, to make matters even worse for the North, Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Confederate cavalrymen had stormed Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12th and killed most of the black troops that had been garrisoned there. Sherman had sent all his available cavalry to rid the West once and for all of Forrest.
John Wright held his daughter’s hand. Their reunion had been deeply moving for both of them. Travis had taken Kitty the rest of the way with hardly a word spoken between them. And on arriving at the small camp, she had burst into tears at the sight of her father. They had spent hours talking of the years in between, the strong bond that had always existed between them once again in evidence.
And then they had moved to the huge winter camp on the banks of the Rapidan River to wait for spring—and for Kitty to decide what she was going to do with her life until the war ended.
The main Confederate defenses extended from northwestern Georgia along the eastern edge of the mountains into Winchester, Virginia, then southeastward across Virginia and into Fredericksburg and Richmond. The word was that Grant and Sherman would make their move sometime in early May.
John was recovering from his wound and he told Kitty that he intended to stay in the fight until the end. “And then what?” she had asked him point-blank. “What happens in the end, Poppa, to all of us?”
He had shrugged. “Who knows except the Lord? I don’t see how the South can hold up under a constant invasion, Kitty. They’re starving—troops half-naked—no supplies. It looks bad for them.”
“And what about your land?” she pointed out, remembering the farm. “Do you just plan to forget all about that, never going home, Poppa?” She sounded bitter.
“If the North wins, I’ll go home. Sure, there’d be hard feelings, maybe even a bit of trouble now and then, but I could handle all that. I’d go back and pick up the pieces, try to work the land and make a living. If your ma is still alive, well, if she’d change, we’d work things out.”
He sounded less than convinced that Lena was still alive, much less that she would ever change. Kitty had had to tell him the truth about her, each word, she knew, stabbing into his heart painfully.
He scratched at his beard thoughtfully. “You’ve been asking an awful lot of questions about me, girl, and what I’ve got planned for the future—if the good Lord gives me one. But I’ve got a few questions for you, questions you haven’t answered these past few weeks we’ve been together. What do you plan to do? Not only in the future but right now. We’re going to move out of camp soon, and I told you, you can go with us and work with the hospital units or you can be sent home—or you can cross the river to Richmond and join the Confederates. It’s your decision, but it’s one that has to be made soon. Things are going to start jumpin’ around here before long.”
“I know.” She stared down at the camp. Each day, more and more men arrived as the Army of the Potomac built its strength for invasion of the South. She could not be a part of it. No matter how much she loved her father—and even felt in her heart that slavery was very wrong—she could not turn against her homeland. An image of honeysuckle and sweet gardenia came into focus…lying in Nathan’s arms beneath the cloak of the weeping willow tree alongside the gurgling creek. Hopes…dreams…promises…a young boy and a young girl, falling in love, untouched by war and the madness that went with it. Could the sweet overshadow the bitter? She did not know. Even if the South were to win the war, could anything be the same again, especially where Nathan was concerned? Was he out of her heart and mind forever?
A lone figure emerged from the fringes of the camp to stare up at the man and woman on the hillside looking down.
Spotting them, he began trudging upward. “That’s Travis,” John said tonelessly. “I’ve got a feelin’ he’s been with General Grant, and now he’s got news. I ain’t so sure I’m going to like that news.”
Kitty stared at the approaching figure, hating the way her heart began to pound. He had that effect. No matter how much she hated him, the sight of him could always start her pulses racing. He was handsome—there was no denying that—and when he looked at her with those steel-gray eyes through thick, half-lowered lashes, she always felt a warm glow spreading throughout her body. Since arriving at the winter camp, he had trimmed his hair till it just touched his collar and he had shaved his beard and trimmed his mustache neatly. He was a fine figure of a man, and as he walked up the hill, Kitty watched the muscles ripple along his thighs. He walked like—she tried to think of a fitting description—like a cat, lean, sinewy, deliberate, as though nothing would dare to get in his way. He was dangerous. He was brutal and cold. And she hated him. But more, she hated the way he made her feel.
“He’s not all that bad.”
She glanced sharply at her father, who was staring with his one eye down the hill at Travis.
Chuckling, he added, “I know right now you’re thinking about how mean he is, how much you hate him ‘cause he’s cold, hard. I used to think the same thing when I first met him. I guess I hated him, too. It wasn’t hard to figure out why he kept you with him instead of sending you back home.”
She blushed, feeling humiliated.
But he went on, not dwelling on Travis’s reasons. “But I fought beside him and got to know him. And that wall he’s got bricked up around him—the one you can’t see but you know it’s there just the same—that was brought on by what happened to him a long time ago. It made him hard on the surface, but underneath it all, he’s a good man.”
“I saw him shoot one of his own soldiers once,” Kitty pointed out. “He was wounded and there was no time to help him and he would probably have died anyway, but Travis took his side arm out and killed him.”
“I’ve done that,” he said simply, as though it were of no major significance. “I’ve killed men I knew well because they were dying. I put them out of their misery. It hurts to do it—G
od knows, it does—but a man does what he has to do.”
She was finding it hard to believe her father had done such a thing. But Kitty was also realizing that she had not known the real man, either.
“I saw Coltrane stop beside a wounded Confederate once and give him a drink of water. The boy died in his arms. I saw him help stop another from bleeding to death. I’ve also seen him go without rations to give his portion to the sick and wounded ‘cause he figured they needed it worse than he did, No, girl, Travis ain’t as bad as you think he is. He’s just got that wall around him to keep from gettin’ hurt again like he once was. Every man has his own kind of armor but he’s just been hurt more than most.”
“I’m not arguing your point. But I know him in a way you don’t, I know what he did to me, my life, and the two of us hate each other. There’s this…feeling between us something I can’t quite define, and we just hate each other. I have no respect or admiration for the man and I live for the time when I’ll never have to see him again.”
He chuckled. “You know, if two mules fry to pull a wagon in the opposite direction, they ain’t going no place. But if they pull together, it’s a pretty good ride. I’d say you and that man walkin’ up this hill are both about as stubborn as two mules trying to go in opposite directions. I think you’ve met your match, girl. You’re a damned pretty woman and all your life men have all but laid down and died over you. That one didn’t. You couldn’t twist him around your little finger and make him do just like you wanted him to. That’s when you locked horns.”
“That’s not fair!” she exploded then. “I told you about my problems with Nathan, how he insists I do nothing but be a wife and mother and not think about a life of my own. He didn’t give in to me.”
“That’s different. He’s raised to believe a woman ain’t fit for anything ‘cept havin’ babies and bein’ a wife. He was fightin’ to protect the way he thinks, too. But when it came to other things, he gave in, I imagine. Most men give in to the little whims of a woman. Not Coltrane. He’s a constant master of any situation, and you just can’t stand up to that, girl, and you’d never be able to.”
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 50
