by Nan Ryan
29
WHILE THE BLOODY WAR Between the States raged across the Southland, a different kind of war raged in the big white mansion on the bluffs of the Mississippi River.
Mary Ellen valiantly battled her involuntary attraction to Captain Knight and his overpowering male-ness. But with little success. In a totally different way he was every bit as captivating to her as when he was a young boy. There was now a cold dignity about him, an unshakable strength that was incredibly appealing.
He was so very handsome, and he had the look and manner of a man who was used to getting his way. He was all potent virility, all hard muscle and masculine planes and angles. His presence was so strong, so compelling, Mary Ellen could sense his closeness before she saw him. She could feel with a kind of electrifying thrill the pressure of his silver-gray eyes upon her.
Still, she reminded herself often that this tall, commanding Union officer was—and always had been—a ruthless man who had no aversion to breaking promises and hearts for his own personal gain.
For his part, Captain Knight made no attempt to temper his appetite for the beautiful blond aristocrat who had jilted him to run off to London with the wealthy, worthless Daniel Lawton.
Captain Knight wanted her and made no bones about it. He was a man of strong animal hungers, but he didn’t regard his passion as having anything to do with love. He was impatient to have Mary back in his arms, back in his bed, but never back in his heart.
A capable officer at ease in a position of authority, Knight was confident he could conquer the beautiful Mary Preble. Her unconditional surrender was imminent; he would see to it. In pursuit of that goal, he altered his schedule, his regular routine. He managed frequently to get in Mary’s way. And under her skin. And when he caught her alone, the determined Captain turned up the heat.
There was no safe place for her to hide.
One Sunday afternoon Mary Ellen, bored and restless, weary of being shut up in her bedroom, ventured downstairs. She glanced cautiously into the spacious dining room that Captain Knight had set up as his main command post. She’d come to think of it as the War Room, and she knew that when the Yankee Captain was there with his men, discussing strategy and going over the battlefield maps spread out on the long dining table, he was completely engrossed.
The Captain now stood on the far side of the long table. He was leaning over, tapping a spot on a spread map with one long forefinger while speaking in a low, deep voice to the uniformed men gathered around the dining table.
He didn’t look up.
Comfortable that neither the Captain nor any of his men had seen her, Mary Ellen tiptoed away. She hurried into her father’s study, chose a leather-bound book from the shelves, and started to go back upstairs. But she stopped and considered the fact that Captain Knight was totally absorbed in the business of war, was unlikely to leave the dining room for several hours.
Mary Ellen hurried out the back door, skipped down the steps, crossed the north lawn, and moved past the marble-faced sundial to the vine-covered summerhouse on the lower terrace.
She sat down on one of the long white matching settees that faced each other, sighed with the simple joy of being outdoors on a beautiful summer day, opened her book, and began to read Pride and Prejudice.
But before she had finished a full page she felt the hot, muggy air come alive with that unmistakable electricity. She knew, before she looked up, that Captain Knight was somewhere close.
A shadow fell across the entrance of the latticed gazebo. Mary Ellen felt a tremor of excitement, felt her pulse quicken. She slowly raised her head. The tall dark Captain stood there looking down at her, unsmiling.
He ducked his head, stepped inside, dropped down onto the settee opposite her. He took the book from her hands and laid it aside.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she asked irritably, commanding her heartbeat to slow, her hands not to shake.
“Just this,” he said. With a swiftness that caught her off guard, he reached out, wrapped his long fingers around the backs of her knees through her full skirts, and drew her forward to the edge of the settee.
“Will you please—” Her breath caught when he bent his dark head and placed a warm, open-lipped kiss to the pale flesh exposed in the unbuttoned lace-trimmed collar of her summer dress. Mary Ellen winced and forcefully pushed him away. She leapt up, but he caught her skirt, trapped her.
Her dark eyes flashing black fire, she slapped at his hand and said, “Either you let me go this minute or I’ll scream.”
“No, you won’t,” he said with that cool, infuriating confidence, and drew her down onto his right knee, wrapping a long arm around her waist.
“I will, so help me,” she threatened, pushing on his broad chest, struggling to free herself.
“Go ahead,” he challenged, took her chin in his hand, turned her face toward his, and kissed the sensitive side of her throat.
“Please. Don’t,” she said, some of the venom going out of her tone. “I mean it. Stop it.”
The Captain didn’t stop.
His lips continued to kiss a hot path up to her ear, and his hand released her chin, moved down, settled gently, caressingly, on her breast.
His even white teeth worrying her dainty earlobe, he whispered, “I want to undress you and make love to here in the summerhouse, Mary.”
“You are insane,” she managed, a little breathlessly, brushing his hand from her breast. “If you think for one minute that I—”
The sentence was never finished. He silenced her with his lips, and as much as Mary Ellen tried not to respond to his passion, she didn’t quite succeed. His devastating kiss disarmed her, and the first thing she knew, the Captain had lifted her feet up into the settee, settled her more comfortably in his arms, and flipped her skirts and petticoats up over her stockinged legs. And his hand was stroking her thigh directly above her blue satin garter.
When he began deftly to unbutton her bodice, Mary Ellen finally came to her senses.
Blinking and shaking her blond head, she said, “No…we can’t…I won’t…I have to get back to the house!”
“Then be still,” the Captain ordered, and looking directly into her dark, flashing eyes, he leisurely rebuttoned her bodice and lowered her raised skirts. “Now you may go, Mary.”
She jumped up off his knee and glared at him when he caught her wrist. “I want you, Mary,” he said, the deep timbre of his voice sending tingling chills up her spine. “And I will have you. I’ll make love to you in ways you can’t even imagine.”
“You filthy, depraved beast, I will not listen to—”
“You want it as well, Mary. I know you do. Come to me tonight. Come and I’ll be waiting.”
She clawed at the firm fingers imprisoning her wrist and told him adamantly, “You’ll have a long wait, Captain!”
“Maybe.” He shrugged negligently. “Maybe not nearly as long as you think.”
“Oh!” She wrenched free of his grasp and whirled away. She could hear his easy laughter as she ran across the lawn to the house. It was the first time she had heard the stony-faced Captain Knight laugh, and he was laughing at her! Well, let him laugh. She’d be the one laughing when he waited in vain for her tonight!
Mary Ellen kept to her room for the rest of the day. When night came she listened, straining, tensed. Finally, shortly after nine o’clock, she heard the door across the hall open, then close. And she smiled wickedly to herself. The restless Yankee Captain had never retired this early before. She knew the reason he did so tonight. He actually had the unmitigated gall to expect her to come across the hall and submissively climb into bed with him. The arrogant bastard.
Mary Ellen felt almost light-hearted as she undressed for bed. The egotistical Captain Knight was waiting for her, and he could go right on waiting till hell froze over!
He had laughed derisively when she’d run from the summerhouse, but he wasn’t laughing now.
She was.
Mary Ellen fel
t as if she had won a very important battle of wills. The insolent Captain Knight supposed that she was so foolish and so weak and so helplessly attracted to him that he need do nothing more than snap his long brown fingers and she would come running. What a laugh! She could go for the rest of her life without his ever touching her again, and she fully intended to do just that.
Mary Ellen smiled as she blew out the lamp and got into the bed. It was great fun knowing that she was the one who had had the last laugh.
Her triumph didn’t last long.
Mary Ellen stepped out into the corridor early the next morning and came face-to-face with the handsome, immaculate, uniformed Captain Knight. He was leaning against the wall just outside her door, long arms crossed over his broad chest, one black-booted foot raised and crossed over the other.
“Mornin’, Mary,” he said as casually as if it were an everyday occurrence. Thunderstruck, she stared openmouthed as he uncrossed his arms and pushed away from the wall. With the speed of a striking serpent, he swept her up into his arms.
His dark face descending to hers, he said, “Perhaps you’re one of those women who prefers making love in the morning.”
Before she could answer, his lips captured hers in an overpowering kiss of such fierce heat and passion, her knees buckled. Her whimpering protests were barely audible beneath his covering, conquering mouth. Quick as a wink he maneuvered her back inside her bedroom and closed the door behind them.
The determined Captain Knight kept kissing Mary Ellen, and he held her so close to his tall, hard frame that she felt the shiny brass buttons of his uniform blouse digging into her tender breasts. A trousered knee was wedged between her legs, leaving Mary Ellen achingly aware of the hard muscle and bone pressing the folds of her full skirts against her groin.
The mouth covering hers was too capable, too captivating; the body crushed against hers was too virile, too blatantly male. Mary Ellen stopped struggling in his arms and clung to him. His lips finally released hers, he raised his head and looked into her dark eyes.
“Make love to me now,” he said softly, persuasively, “before you go to the hospital.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she managed, but with little conviction.
“Is it? I don’t think so. And I don’t believe you think so, either.”
She studied his smug handsome face, and a small measure of her innate good sense returned. “What you mean is you don’t believe I think at all. Isn’t that it?” She began to pull from his embrace. “What happened the other night was a mistake. A terrible mistake for which I take full responsibility. But I guarantee you it will not happen again.”
“It will, Mary. You know it. I know it.”
She pulled completely away from him, and her dark eyes narrowed. “No, it will not. You vainly suppose that all you need do is touch me and I’m rendered incapable of intelligent thought.” Her ire was rising swiftly, steadily. She put her hands on her hips, smiled sanguinely, and, hoping to sting him, said, “You’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with, Captain Knight. While your questionable charm may work wonders on an occasional female, may I remind you its effects are short-lived on me.” Her smile widened as she drove her point home. “Why, I once went right from your arms into Daniel Lawton’s without giving you a second thought!”
Mary Ellen hoped to see at least of fleeting flicker of pain cross his handsome face. But she was disappointed. His expression never changed. His silver-gray eyes maintained their usual calm. To her dismay he just smiled at her, reached out, and toyed with the decorative piping on her sleeve as if he hadn’t heard a word she said.
Angered, Mary Ellen brushed his hand away, pushed past him, and stormed from the room, saying over her shoulder, “Stay away from me!”
30
THE CHASE CONTINUED.
The able aggressor was coolly resolute, and he was also imaginative and resourceful. Tactically trained, he was ever careful. He did not attract the attention of anyone other than the beautiful opponent he meant to capture and conquer. He kept his moving target always in sight, never allowing her to stray too far outside the realm of his reach.
The anxious quarry was fully aware she was being shadowed. Nobody’s fool, she was well aware of her pursuer’s clever strategy and took extra precautions not be caught anywhere alone if at all possible. She could do nothing about his watching her incessantly, but she could and would foil his plans to pounce on her when no one was looking.
And the chase continued.
Captain Clay Knight pursued Mary Ellen with a cold determination that both frightened and flattered her. He had her so effectively fenced in, she couldn’t possibly escape. He was everywhere at once, watching her, taunting her, waiting for her to fall into his arms.
Despite all her best efforts to keep the Captain from catching her alone, he was ingenious at devising methods of doing just that.
He single-handedly surrounded her.
And when he had her alone, he kissed her until her head spun, embraced her until she was weak in his arms, and told her in low, caressing tones all the shockingly intimate things he meant to do to her. He spoke graphically of all the ways he would make love to her.
Appalled, Mary Ellen swore repeatedly she didn’t want to hear his disgusting talk, would not listen to such lewd language. But she found—guiltily—that it was incredibly arousing to hear the strikingly handsome Captain promise her forbidden erotic pleasures she could never have even imagined.
His animal appeal was too potent. She had been lonely for too long. As the hot summer days—and hotter summer nights—marched listlessly by, Mary Ellen knew she was weakening, knew she couldn’t fight him much longer.
So did the Captain.
He sensed when her capitulation was at hand and planned accordingly.
On a sticky hot evening in early July, Mary Ellen, arriving home later than usual, saw no blue-coated men on the grounds of Longwood. Curiously, none were lounging about on the front gallery. Nor were there any inside the quiet mansion. She circled through the drawing room, moved on through the dining hall War Room, and went into the kitchen.
Not a single Yankee in sight.
Mary Ellen smiled.
Longwood was deserted.
If they were off on some kind of maneuver or contraband exercise, that meant their menacing commander was also absent from Longwood. Which afforded her a few hours of blessed peace.
Titus and Mattie were not in the kitchen. Mary Ellen started to call out to the old servants, then changed her mind. No hurry. She had all evening to see about dinner and a bath. First she’d go to her room and get out of her hot stockings and petticoats.
Back out in the marble-floored corridor, Mary Ellen looked up the grand staircase and saw that old Titus had lighted the frosted globe wall sconces leading up to the second floor. She blessed him silently for remembering. He’d been awfully forgetful of late.
The summer twilight was turning to full darkness as Mary Ellen languidly climbed the stairs. How pleasant it was not to be in a rush. What a luxury not to feel as if she had to get quickly inside the safety of her room.
Mary Ellen reached the second-floor landing, and her brief sense of well-being vanished.
Captain Knight, looking oh so threatening and darkly appealing in a pair of neatly pressed white uniform trousers—and nothing else—stood just outside the open door of the master suite.
In the muted light from the wall sconce above his head, he was a study in light and shadow. Black and white. White trousers. White teeth. White towel draped around his neck. Black hair. Black silk robe over his arm. And through the white trousers, under which he obviously wore no underwear, the thick blue-black hair of his groin was a shadowy reminder of his virility.
Mary Ellen looked at him silently.
The harshly handsome face. The beautifully configured body. Captain Knight was surely one of nature’s most perfect works, and she could have spent the rest of her life doing nothing but admiring his extraordinary masculi
ne beauty.
At the same time, she resented him for being so irresistibly handsome. Damn him for being so gorgeous! Why should he possess a body so splendid she was constantly tempted to run her hands over the beautifully carved planes and angles?
Wishing to high heaven he were not so physically flawless and dangerously fascinating, Mary Ellen purposely kept her features composed. She gazed at him impassively without speaking. Until he held out his hand to her.
Sarcastically she said, “What do you want from me, Captain Knight?”
Unsmiling, he said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, I mean besides that. What are you after this time? Surely just making love to me isn’t your main goal. Now, when I was a girl you wanted—”
“Your body is all I want, Mary,” he cut in smoothly. “Nothing more, believe me.”
“Well, how very flattering,” she said bitingly. “And you suppose I’ll just hand myself over for your…your…use.”
“It works both ways. You seem to be temporarily without a lover, so—”
“I don’t take lovers!” she snapped defensively.
“No? When did you change? As I recall, you took Daniel Lawton for your lover the minute my back was turned.”
“Your back wasn’t turned, Captain!” she said angrily. “It was gone!”
“Ah, well, I’m here now and so are you.”
Bristling, she said, “I do not have lovers!”
“All the more reason for us to—shall we say—accommodate each other. We’re both available, convenient, and no one ever need know.”
“You vile, low bastard,” she said acidly, “I really do hate you, do you know that?”
Unruffled, he replied, “So you’ve mentioned. But then how we feel about each other has little to do with lovemaking, wouldn’t you agree?” He stepped closer. “Don’t fight it any longer, Mary. What’s the use?”
What was the use? she wondered wearily. She hated him, but still she wanted him. Why couldn’t she be as detached and sophisticated and blasé as he about having a brief affair? Why not enjoy a few nights of forbidden ecstasy in a world that now offered little joy?
