Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (63 page)

“I didn’t say you were!” Her head came up off his back. “But you were obviously thinking about it since
you
brought it up.”

“Maybe that’s because I figure that’s all you’re good for—you or any other woman.”

“I wish…” She was fuming. “I wish you would go to hell! I wish you had died. I wish…”

Suddenly, abruptly, he’d had enough. He yanked the horse to a halt and slid down off the saddle, turning quickly to pull Kitty down with him. His arms grabbing her against his chest, he glared down at her in the blinding whiteness of the moon reflecting off the snow. “You wish I were dead?” he snapped, bending to kiss her so hard she felt his teeth cutting into her lips. Then he raised his head to whisper, “You wish I were dead, princess? Then you couldn’t feel this, could you?” His hands reached around her to clutch at her breasts, squeezing until she cried out in pain.

With one quick swoop, he lifted her up, tramping through the snow toward a rock ledge hanging over a small hollowed-out place in the side of the mountain. He threw her down, then fell beside her. He ripped at her clothes until she lay naked before him, then his hands moved swiftly to set every fiber of her body on fire. Kitty lay there passively, determined not to do what he wanted—not to fight or beg him not to take her. But Travis had no intention of making her beg him not to have his way with her. Instead, his hands and lips moved over her body, and against her will, she began to writhe as the giant fingers of passion played along the keyboard of her body. She wanted him. Damnit, damn her body and soul to hell—she wanted him.

He moved between her thighs, probing with his warm tongue. Kitty clutched at his long, thick hair, twining it in her fingers. This was a dream. None of it was real. When she awoke, she would be back in the Indian camp, facing another day of ministering to the sick and old. She was not here in the arms of the only man who could ever turn her heart to butter with just a look or a caress.

“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.”