Surrender the Wind (27 page)

Ian beamed from ear to ear. “My wife’s a very good cook, isn’t she, General.”

“Your wife?”
The cook took two steps back. “You mean that brown-haired woman in my cook tent? Why she’s the sweetest thing this side of the Mississippi.”

John pivoted. “Your wife?”

“I married Brigid.”

John stared. Ian was one of his most predictable men. This development gave John pause—Ian McDougal unpredictable? “May I offer my—belated felicitations? And may I congratulate our additional blessing on our new cook?”

“Absolutely.” Ian grinned from ear to ear.

The doctor pushed the cook aside. “Excuse me, General Rourke. I know you are awful busy but a crazy woman came to my surgery and had the audacity to kick me out. Imagine, a Doctor of Medicine.”

“I can imagine,” Rourke drawled. His gaze roved over the surgeon’s head. A soldier thrust a pen and paper into Catherine’s hands and another placed a portable writing desk on her lap. He also noticed how beautiful she was when she turned up her face to laugh at what a soldier had commented. He also knew how conniving she could be. To escape, she would endear his men to her.

The surgeon ranted. “In any case, this yellow-haired witch has taken over my hospital and refuses to allow me to perform my proper duties. I insist you do something.”

“The surgeon got very personal with the lady, General.” Lieutenant Johnson interrupted, earning a scathing glance from the surgeon.

“And General Rourke—” The surgeon sneered. “Lieutenant Johnson supported her, got right into the thick of things. You should know that for when you have him court-martialed.”

His lieutenant stood quiet. John was stone-faced. “How personal?”

“I slapped her on the rear,” the surgeon bragged. “If I really wanted to have my way with that camp whore, I would have thrown her down on the ground and mounted her.”

“Hold my plate, Ian.” John’s hand clenched. “That yellow-haired whore you just referred to is my wife.” Before the surgeon could react, John cracked a hard left to the point of the surgeon’s jaw. The doctor’s mouth fell open and his knees sagged. John was going to hit him again, except the doc dropped face forward in the dirt, and unconscious at John’s feet.

He took his plate from Ian again and with the same easygoing smile, said, “This food is exemplary, Ian. One of the best decisions I’ve made in this war was having
your
intended
accompany us south.

More men came forward, stepping over the unconscious doctor, uncertain about the state of the general’s temper. One of the more bald-faced men spoke for the group. “Some crazy brown-haired woman had us picking huckleberries, General. We’re fighting men, not berry pickers.”

John had just taken a taste of the huckleberry pie. It melted inside his mouth. “It seems to me Ian,” Rourke drawled to his adjutant. “What should have been a simple homecoming has turned into an exercise in diplomacy.”

This time, Ian stepped forward. “That’s my wife you’re talking about, and I don’t take too kindly about you calling her crazy.” Ian looped a right, caught the soldier in the bristles of his cleft and knocked him flat. Ian dusted his knuckles off on the soldier’s shirt. “Takes the edge off, doesn’t it General?”

“Any more questions?” John asked, scooping another bite of pie into his mouth.

“No-no, Sir,” echoed the rest of the men, observing their companions dispatched, and lying prone over one another in an inconvenient pile of horse dung.

“Cook!”

“Yes, General.” He half-turned, ready to flee. “I didn’t know the yellow-haired woman was your wife. Why she’s the nicest lady—”

“This side of the Mississippi,” John finished for him. “I want you to learn from Ian’s wife how to cook as well as this.”

“Yes, Sir. I’ll stick to her like a tick on a mule.” The cook looked at Ian’s formidable countenance and muttered beneath his breath, that Rourke barely caught. “More like she’ll be sticking to me like a tick on a mule.”

Chuckling, Rourke dismissed the frightened cook. Hearing female laughter, John jerked his head up…, listening to the lyrical seductive laugh of his wife entertained by a covey of his soldiers. He didn’t care for his camp to be turned into a ring of parlor flirtations nor did he care for his wife to be the center of those attentions.

“Excuse me gentlemen. I believe I’ll see to my wife.” John strode to a knot of oaks and stood undetected behind his wife and her acquaintances.

“Really, Mrs. Rourke, what are my chances with you? Please do tell.” A sergeant begged, refusing to release her hand until she gave him the answer he wanted to hear. From the meager distance that separated them, a breeze carried the delectable scent of her fragrance, and John inhaled as it twined through his senses. Everything about her was intoxicating. She met the sergeant with a breathtaking smile and John had a bird’s eye view of her creamy shoulders and silky breasts, beckoning him from her daring décolletage. John’s hand curled around his pistol handle. It was same view his soldiers shared, towering over his wife and ogling her plentiful charms.

She bit her lip to stifle a grin. “Your chances are one in a million, Sergeant Smith.”

“So you are saying I have one chance.” The sergeant refused to let her hand go.

John had enough. Her clever manipulations of his men, leading them wanting, frothing with anticipation like her personal stable of rutting stallions. He took two paces closer, his shadow swallowing the sergeant. The other soldiers held their breath. “I’d say your chances are zero,” John said, his voice, though matter of fact, possessed an ominous quality.

Catherine turned. The sergeant dropped her hand.

“Mrs. Rourke was endeavoring to write a-a letter for me.” The sergeant explained.

“I see.” said John, and the only sound was the wind climbing through the trees. John caught Catherine by the elbow. “I have returned and wish to have a few private reflections with my wife.” He nodded to the remaining men. In silence, they both walked, Catherine with stiff dignity, John with stern discipline into the privacy of his tent.

Catherine jerked away. “Don’t you ever treat me like that again. I am not a dog tethered on a leash. Nor will I adhere to your every command. As your wife, you will give me the respect due to me. Do you understand?”

Neither spoke. Both breathing hard, they stared into each other’s eyes. Was her heart beating as hard as his?

Why did he bring her here?
God he was weary. She stood like a Greek goddess, still and perfect, cold and aloof. A wind beat against the canvas, lifted a tendril of her hair to tease the bristles on his chin.

They had come far.
Too far.

But he could not risk touching her. To open Pandora’s box, Armageddon as a prize? Another breeze crossed the land, cool and sweet. It did nothing to ease the fire ablaze throughout his limbs.

He could see the rise and fall of her breasts with the uneven whisper of her breath—and he could see the pulse beating at her throat, beating there in anger, or was it fear?

He wanted her.

He pulled her roughly, almost violently to him, gathering her into his arms, his mouth covering hers with savage hunger. She cried out from the cruel ravishment of his mouth and pushed away, but he crushed her to him. Her skin was so hot and he craved the feel of her…free from all her clothing. The thought of her naked beneath him, made John’s blood rush. Just one more touch.

Though in full knowledge of what he was doing, John’s mind cleared enough to understand he was ending his attraction to her, needed to identify he was in absolute control and to destroy the siren that called him to slaughter. But to his shock, the warmth of her pulsing body and her hand, caressing the back of his neck created a red-hot blaze of need.

Not enough. His hands moved to her sleeves, yanking them down her arms, exposing rosy nipples beneath her chemise. He shuddered when he slipped his hands beneath the filmy fabric and palmed the satiny skin of her breasts, their tender buds hardening to the graze of his thumb and forefinger. Her moan inflamed him and he lowered his mouth and suckled her breast. She tasted like wild honey and he pulled with his mouth, surveying the wet sheen on her nipple. His hand seared a path down her abdomen and came to rest on her hip, pressing her intimately to his arousal.

“General Rourke? Excuse me?” A soldier’s modulated voice called from outside. The voice seemed light years away, yet was like getting a bucket of ice water thrown over his head. He hovered above her, breathing raggedly, his gaze fierce as he snapped through his passion-ridden brain.

“Make yourself decent.” He pushed her behind him, straightened his dusty clothes and wrenched open the tent flaps. She slipped by him. Her hair caught in the brass buttons of his coat. She snatched her hair from his grasp, smothered a sob and fled.

* * *

John met the rest of the daylight hours in torment. Part of him wanted to find his wife and apologize, the other part remained embittered with memories of her treachery. Most of his time was spent riding out and checking with pickets, camp disputes, foraging feed for the horses, and taking stock of ammunition and rifle supplies. Shortages. Everywhere there were shortages. How was he supposed to lead an army against the enemy?

In less harassing moments, he read through and wrote dispatches, and then he visited the sick and injured men in the hospital. There he learned of his wife’s treatment of his men. The hospital had been given a complete overhaul, clean, efficient, and tidy. To think she had improved the morale of his men. Many sung her praises, calling her an angel of mercy. One soldier informed him about how she saved his leg, and his life.

John moved on to visit with the rest of the men in his camp. Again, they too sung her praises, likening her to a saint.

“General Rourke, Sir. If I may have a minute of your time, please. I’d like to say thanks to you for your wife even though she’s a Yank. I never met a woman with so many talents. She can sew and tend wounded and can organize a camp better than any general—present company excluded. And, she has that brown-haired gal cooking food fit for the gods.”

One young soldier mentioned how she wrote a hope-filled letter, encouraging his wife who was expecting their first child. More approached him, thanking the general for the gracious generosity of his wife’s time. Not only did she handle correspondence to loved ones’ back home, but she had become a ready ear, sympathetic to their problems, and feelings of loneliness. Catherine had become a beacon of light for his men.

So she happened to earn their trust? Clever. No doubt she moved about the camp, collecting troop numbers and strengths. John frowned. He had not seen her all day but had guards, keeping an eye on her every movement. Soon they would be engaged. General Grant carried huge numbers of Union troops, placing Petersburg under siege. General Jubal Early’s raid on Washington would not go unanswered. The Valley would be a prime target for Hunter or Sheridan’s Calvary. It was all a matter of time.

The sun dropped beyond the western ridge of the Shenandoah, and the shadow of night crossed slowly over the land. For a while, the country was much as it had been—the red oaks, dark and towering, frowned on either side of his encampment. The lower limbs and forest floor were stripped of its wood for campfires. The meadow debouched into a close-bitten field, and out of this gnawed land the camp rose up with its hundreds of canvas tents like a swarm of locusts.

But it was the sky that caught his reflection, streaks of amber giving way to indigo, mingling with the darker permanence of amethyst. The pigments were so dazzling and extraordinary, that it gave John pause to witness such creation—and isolation.

John gazed down upon his encampment. The distant sound of a harmonica mingled with the normal sounds of a military camp settling in for the night. The men were talking quietly, laughing about a mutual joke shared around their campfires. His men. Men to whom he had a sworn duty. He would remember these warm little scenes for the rest of his life, whatever destiny prevailed upon him.

Fragments of what he’d done earlier in the day flashed before him. Catherine, warm with passion, her lips, her soft breasts, she had too much power over him. No. He dared not hazard another encounter.

He pushed away from the tree and raked his hair off his damp forehead. Slimy and sweaty and smelling of horses, he walked a mile to the eastside of camp. He waved to the pickets so he wouldn’t get shot. They knew he wanted to be alone.

Stripping away his clothes, John walked into the shallows of a creek then dove into a deeper hole. He swam along the gravel bottom for a long time trying to cleanse her from his thoughts, and then when his lungs could bear no more, burst in a shower of spray to the top. With a cake of precious soap, he scrubbed himself clean, swam upstream then drifted down with the current. Calm? Peace? There was none.

What the hell was happening to him?
He dove into a deeper pool, searching for the cooler depths, until his lungs ached for sweet oxygen. Treading water, he backhanded the water’s surface, observing a wake of driving spray while rummaging for solutions that had no way of emerging. His body was controlling his mind. Celibacy was hell. What man wouldn’t be crazy with lust by now? She had every one of them wanting.

He laughed, then cursed his own pathetic weakness as he strode out of the stream. He shook his head, the water spraying from his hair in all directions. Dripping wet, he pulled on his dusty trousers and headed to his tent to get clean clothes.

John approached his headquarters and stopped dead in his tracks. Lounging around a campfire, were several of his soldiers, their heads cranked around, mouths gaping open, all focused in a single direction. He followed the course of their gaze and observed firsthand the object of their aspiring concentration.
Catherine.

He gritted his teeth. It was one thing to have a lantern lit inside his tent for illumination. It was another situation when the translucence of tent canvas silhouetted her perfect form while she bathed for all to behold. He would have his tent removed to the privacy of the woods in the morning.