“I would never do anything to hurt you,” Caleb said softly. Letter to Reader Title Page Also by About the Author Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Epilogue Weddings by De Wilde Copyright

“I would never do anything to hurt you,” Caleb said softly.

“If I hadn’t pulled away, something might have happened that would be all wrong. I can’t want you!” But Megan did want him, right or wrong. “You can’t care for me!”

“I already do.”

“No! We’re enemies!”

“You know we aren’t. The war doesn’t have anything to do with us. Or with how we feel.” Tears glazed Megan’s eyes and he wanted to hold her and kiss them away.

“I can’t love you,” she whispered. Then she pulled away and hurried from the room.

For a moment Caleb stood there. He slowly lowered himself back onto the bed, his leg hurting like demons were playing in it. Love? Until she had said the word it hadn’t occurred to him. Now it refused to leave his mind. Love. He was falling in love with her—the one woman in the world he couldn’t have...!

Dear Reader,

The award-winning author of close to three dozen books that range from mainstream to contemporary and historical romance, Lynda Trent has written another stirring tale with this month’s The Fire Within. Don’t miss this story of a young woman whose plan to trade a wounded Union captain for her Confederate fiancé is threatened when she falls in love with her prisoner.

In her third historical for Harlequin, Man of the Mist, Elizabeth Mayne tells the heartwarming story of childhood sweethearts who, as adults, must unravel their feelings of hurt and betrayal and learn to accept that their love was meant to be.

Our other titles include a new Medieval from Margaret Moore, The Norman’s Heart, the delightful story of a staid nobleman and his willful bride. And Birdie, by Taylor Ryan, the Regency Era story of a young woman who must battle countless odds on her journey to happiness.

Whatever your taste in reading, we hope Harlequin Historicals will keep you coming back for more. Please keep a lookout for all four titles, available wherever books are sold.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Fire Within

Lynda Trent

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Books by Lynda Trent

Harlequin Historicals

Heaven’s Embrace #59

The Black Hawk #75

Rachel #119

Beloved Wife #154

Thornbeck #232

The Fire Within #314

Harlequin Books

Historical Christmas Stories 1991

“Christmas Yet to Come”

LYNDA TRENT

started writing romances at the insistence of a friend, but it was her husband who provided moral support whenever her resolve flagged. Now husband and wife are both full-time writers of contemporary and historical novels, and despite the ups and downs of this demanding career, they love every—well, almost every—minute of it. The author is always glad to hear from her readers.

To Clark and Sharon and love everlasting

Chapter One

Caleb Morgan leaned close to his horse’s neck as the animal reared and plunged. His long sword gleamed in the sunlight, red streaks running from its tip. He was exhausted from the battle but he couldn’t sound retreat. Not when there was still a chance they could defeat the Rebels. His dark blue uniform was stained with gunpowder and enemies’ blood, and his horse was lathered with sweat.

With a shout, Caleb encouraged his men to greater effort. As their captain he had their loyalty and their respect. He never sent a man into territory too dangerous for him to go as well. Caleb turned the horse into the fight and kicked him into a charge. The horse had seen many battles and plunged forward, his ears flattened viciously. When it came to a heated battle, this mount was priceless.

All around him Caleb saw men, some in blue, others in gray or butternut, slashing at one another and shouting in pain or battle fury. In the midst of a battle, they looked curiously the same. The acrid odor of gunpowder filled Caleb’s nose and he shoved his sword at the nearest Rebel. It made contact and the man shouted as he grabbed at the wound on his arm. Caleb took him down with the next thrust.

His horse reared again, pawing at a man who had run too close. The animal liked battle more than Caleb did. In quieter times Caleb wondered if the animal would ever be docile again—assuming the cursed war would ever end. At times it seemed as if the fighting and ceaseless marching would go on forever. To a man like Caleb who loved his home and family, it was as if hell had broken out on earth. Caleb was gentle by nature and a soldier by necessity. He was good at both.

“Captain Morgan! The flag!” a voice shouted beside him.

Caleb looked up to see the flag bearer stagger and fall. He spurred his horse forward and caught the flag before it could hit the ground. He wouldn’t allow the enemy to capture it. His men shouted approval and one grabbed at the wooden pole. Caleb released it and went back into the thick of the battle.

He had no idea how long he fought. He was beyond tired. His arms and legs were numb from exhaustion and his breath came in short gasps. Suddenly he felt his horse tremble and stumble. He looked down to see a wound gaping in the animal’s shoulder. The horse tried to lunge, but Caleb could tell he was finished. He looked up to see a Rebel soldier aiming another shot at him. Although the horse tried to dodge at his command, Caleb felt the thud of the bullet into his own leg. At first there was no pain and he watched the spreading blood as if it had nothing to do with him.

A Rebel ran toward him, sword raised and Caleb slashed at him, but not before the enemy’s blade sank into his arm. Caleb shouted in anger as much as in pain. The bullet wound started throbbing at the same time. Caleb reeled in the saddle, marveling that his horse was still on his feet and that he was in the saddle. A curious lightness was making his head spin. Caleb shook it to clear it, this was no time for weakness.

“Captain! Should I sound retreat?” The bugler was a young boy. Too young in Caleb’s opinion.

“Sound retreat!” he commanded. The day was lost. He wondered why he couldn’t hear the sound of the bugle as the boy put it to his mouth. A glance at his leg told him he was losing blood fast, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter to him. “Retreat!” he shouted to his men. He reined his horse aside to let the men pass before him.

At the edge of the woods his horse stumbled again and Caleb knew he would never be able to carry him to safety. He roared his anger at losing such a precious fighting mate. He had no love for this particular animal, but he respected his strength of heart. Another bullet sang past his ear and he felt the horse stagger. He was shot again.

The animal traveled several yards into the woods, then fell heavily to one side. Caleb felt himself falling with the horse, but it was as if it were happening to someone else. In slow motion, the floor of the forest came to meet him and he tasted dry leaves. Then nothing.

The autumn air felt crisp on Megan’s face as she bent to hoe up the last of the year’s potatoes. Her garden was small but filled most of the level space between her house and the slope of the mountain. She had spent all her life in Black Hollow, Tennessee and she felt as much a part of the tan earth as were the potatoes she was digging for the root cellar.

Far in the distance she heard the sound of a rifle, then another. Megan straightened and listened. It was too late in the day for her father to be hunting. Besides, he rarely took two shots to bring down game. As she listened, several more shots rang out. These seemed closer than the others. The next were closer still. Megan gathered the potatoes into her apron and ran toward the house.

For four years the Civil War had raged. Her mountain had been taken first by one side, then by the other, back and forth. It all meant little to Megan as long as she and the ones she loved were safe.

She closed the door behind her and crossed the room to put the potatoes on the table. Even with the shutters closed she could hear the sounds of the battle. It was taking place in the clearing where her father had shot the bear the summer before. That was too close for safety. Megan went around her small cabin, barring the shutters and doors with the iron straps her brother-in-law had made for the purpose.

The cabin was dim with the door and windows closed but she didn’t waste lamp oil by making a light. Oil was too precious, as was everything else, to be used by day.

She sat in the rocker Seth’s uncle had made for a wedding gift and rocked slowly. The chair’s rockers were slightly uneven so its gait was jerky and it edged across the floor if she rocked for long. Still, it was a rocking chair and it was her own so she didn’t mind. The Brennans had never been much at making furniture.

The cabin was snug and strong. Anything less than a direct strike from a cannonball would bounce off its sides. She told herself that as she listened to the battle, the sounds muffled now by the thick logs. Her father had made the cabin, and Samuel Llewellyn was thorough in everything he did. Once he set his mind to a thing, he didn’t rest until it was accomplished.

At times like this, Megan disliked being up here in her cabin and away from the rest of her family and the small settlement nearer the bottom of Black Hollow. It wasn’t a town and likely never would be. They built their own cabins and the furniture to go in them and planted the food they needed. Patrick Cassidy knew enough about blacksmith work to keep the horses and mules in good shape, but that was as far as they were willing to go. If Black Hollow became a town, strangers would eventually move there, and no one in the settlement welcomed change.

The last stranger to move to Black Hollow had been Megan’s mother, Jane. She had come there as Samuel’s bride, her language still filled with the lilt from her native Ireland. Bridget had taken her bright red hair from Mama’s side of the family. In Megan and Owen it was a darker red, like mahogany.

Samuel had met Jane, courted her and won her during one of his brief visits to his cousins who lived in Oak Ridge. That had been more than twenty-two years ago. Megan knew because her older brother, Owen, was twenty-one and he had been born within a year of their marriage. For a forbidden moment she thought about Owen and wondered if he was well. Since Papa had disowned him, Owen wasn’t to be discussed or even thought of.

Next had come her own birth when Owen was two, then two years later, their sister Bridget. Bridget was a duplicate of their mother and their father’s favorite, just as Owen had been their mother’s. No one had favored Megan, but she understood why. She was much too outspoken and rebellious to suit the settlement. The only boy who ever showed interest in her was Seth Brennan.

She sighed and wondered when Seth would come home. He was impetuous. That was the word her father used, at least. In her opinion, he was simply bullheaded. More than a year ago, Seth had drunk too much whiskey from the still at the bottom of the Hollow and had enlisted in the Confederate army. Unlike Owen, he had chosen the side the settlement favored, but he had chosen to do this the week before they were to be married. Megan had spent the next few months being angry, but her temper had had ample time to cool and now she was just lonely.

Samuel had built the cabin in a pretty spot up the mountain from the others, on the only place flat enough to build one. In some ways Megan enjoyed the privacy. Or at least she did when army troops weren’t passing by or fighting in the clearings. The cabin’s remote location gave her a chance to do the one thing that her family disapproved of most—read.

Books were Megan’s passion, and she had loved them ever since one of her aunts had taught her to read. It had been during a hard winter when there was nothing else to do. Her aunt had meant to teach only Owen, but Megan and Bridget learned as well, by looking over Owen’s shoulder and borrowing his book. Bridget rarely read anything but Megan read everything she could find. When she had a rare bit of money of her own, she would walk to the nearest town, Raintree, and buy a book.

Since she moved to the cabin, she had brought her books out of their hiding place in the barn and had hidden them in the cabin. Seth was no fonder of her reading than was her father, so she didn’t plan to let him know she was still doing it.

That Megan had moved into the cabin at all had been a matter of convenience. It was expected that the war would end soon, and it had been time to put in the garden that would see her and Seth through their first winter together. The cabin was remote enough from her parents’ house for it to be inconvenient for Megan to live at home and walk there. Besides, her parents’ house was crowded with two grown daughters, and it was time for Megan to move on.

Bridget was married now. When Patrick heard Seth had enlisted, he signed up, as well. Before he left, he married Bridget. They had been in love ever since they were children so it was no surprise to anyone, nor was it a question of ensuring that Bridget would wait for him. Bridget was like their mother—once she fell in love, she would follow her man, even to a place like Black Hollow, and be faithful forever.

Although she never told anyone, Megan was disappointed that Seth hadn’t loved her enough to marry her before he went away. Especially since they had made love one night in the clearing where the battle was now being fought. For several long, agonizing weeks Megan had prayed she wasn’t pregnant from her lapse of discretion. Fortunately she hadn’t been and no one knew what she and Seth had done. But Seth knew and he hadn’t married her before he left. That was one reason Megan had been so angry over his rash enlistment. Their wedding had been set for the following week! Why had he chosen to leave at a time like that?

There was no use wondering about it, Megan told herself. Seth did as he pleased, when he pleased. Usually this didn’t bother her and it was unreasonable to mind it one time and not another. At least this was what she told herself during the long, dark nights when she was alone in the cabin with only the calls of night birds for company. At least now she could read or draw when she pleased, for there was no one to hide it from.

Megan also loved to draw. No one had taught her: it came as naturally to her as breathing. With a sliver of charcoal from the hearth she could draw an owl or a raccoon that looked real. Brother Benjamin Grady, the man who was Black Hollow’s self-styled preacher, disliked her drawing even more than he did her reading. He maintained it wasn’t natural to draw a thing on paper, that it wasn’t much different from making graven images, which was clearly against God’s law. But drawing didn’t feel wrong to Megan so she simply hid that, too.

She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sound of the battle by remembering what Seth’s voice sounded like. Lately that had been difficult, though she would never have admitted it.

The sounds of battle had lasted for hours. Megan stopped rocking as the reports from the guns moved farther down the mountain. She could tell one side had overpowered the other. It didn’t really matter to her which had won. Unlike her family, she wasn’t a staunch supporter of either side. The issues that had caused the war didn’t touch her. Tariffs and central banking had no part in Black Hollow, and Megan had never seen a slave in her life.

She cautiously opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. She could still hear the guns but they were too far away now to be accompanied by the soldiers’ shouts or the shriek of the horses. Once again her cabin had been spared.

Megan went inside and got the knife she used for dressing out meat and as many tow sacks as she owned. Horse meat wasn’t something she enjoyed, but she had learned to eat almost anything. There were too many soldiers and stragglers on the road to keep food safe. Her smokehouse had been emptied only the week before when she was visiting her family, and she wasn’t eager to spend the winter without meat on the table.

She made her way through the familiar woods, stopping every few feet and listening to be certain the soldiers weren’t doubling back. When soldiers were around, the only safe place was indoors with the door firmly bolted and barred.

Soon she was in the clearing. Megan stopped and stared at the once familiar meadow. Horses’ hooves had churned the late grasses into the dirt and there was blood everywhere. Horses lay dead on the ground, their saddles still strapped to their backs. There were no men. While part of the conquering troop chased the retreating one down the mountain, the rest of the soldiers had stayed behind to gather the dead and wounded of both sides into wagons and haul them to their headquarters.

The silence was menacing. Megan stepped farther into the clearing and for a moment wondered if she was in the place she remembered. Could this be where she had played as a child and where she had given herself to Seth just before he joined the army? It was no longer a peaceful woodland meadow, but a place of death and destruction. She knew she would never enjoy coming here again.

Eager to do what she had come to do and be away from the place, Megan went to the nearest horse. Kneeling on the ground, she began the task of dressing it out for her smokehouse.

As she worked, she heard a sound. Megan froze, her eyes darting about. Were the soldiers coming back?

The sound came again. She stared into the woods, trying to pierce the shadows and saplings to see who was there. It was no animal sound, but rather that of a man. Apparently he was in pain.

Holding the knife close to her side as Owen had once taught her, she went nearer. Every time she heard the moan she paused, deciding whether to go on or to flee. Not too far inside the woods she saw the body of a horse. A man lay beside it.

As quietly as she could, Megan went closer. He had been thrown clear when the horse fell. Judging by the sluggish way he moved, he had been unconscious when the other dead and wounded were taken away and no one had found him. She edged nearer. She could tell by his uniform he was an officer. His right leg and left arm were covered in blood. If it was all his, it was a miracle he was alive at all, let alone able to move and call out.

Megan lost her fear as she went to him. He was young and handsome with black hair that was matted to his head with sweat. His skin was pale from loss of blood. He wore a Yankee uniform, but so did her brother, Owen.

She knelt beside him. “Lie still. Let me see how badly you’re hurt.”

He tried to focus on her face but the effort was too much for him. “My men...” he said in a hoarse voice.

“Your men are gone. They left you behind.” She looked around, wondering what to do with him. He might be the enemy, but he was also a human and she couldn’t leave him to die. “You sure picked a bad place to get wounded. I don’t know if I can get you to the house or not.” She was speaking as much to herself as to him. She pulled his leg straight and examined the worst of the wounds. “You might recover with some help.”

He tried to sit up but fell back.

“Stop moving around before you bleed to death.” She took her skinning knife and slit his pant leg so she could tie one of the tow sacks around the wound. She made it as tight as she could to stop the bleeding. Then she did the same to his arm.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. He was so pale and so still she wasn’t sure he was conscious. He nodded. “I’m going to try to get you to my cabin but you’re too big for me to carry so you’re going to have to help me.”

This time when he struggled to sit up, she pulled him upright. The bandages seemed to be holding against the loss of any more blood. She braced herself and pulled him to his feet. Before he could fall, she slipped his good arm around her neck and balanced him. “Can you walk? It’s not too far. Just past these woods.”

Leaning heavily on her, he managed to limp at her side. “Too bad they didn’t leave me a short, skinny man,” she complained good-naturedly to boost his spirits. She wasn’t tall and he towered over her by several inches. If he were standing straight, she didn’t think the top of her head would reach past his shoulder. Most of the other men in the Hollow were short or medium in height, including Seth, and this man seemed huge in comparison.

Her determination was finally paying off. Like her father, Megan was too stubborn to give up once she decided to get the soldier safely into her cabin. By the time they went up the sloping grade and across her small yard, she was breathing heavily and aching from supporting his weight. “Steps,” she gasped. “You have to go up three steps now.”

He doggedly lifted his feet. She held to him firmly. They had come this far; she wasn’t going to drop him now. She kicked the door open with the toe of her shoe and took him into the house. He hesitated and blinked, as if he was only now aware of his surroundings.

“Don’t stop now. We have a few more feet to go.” She took him into the tiny bedroom she was to have shared with Seth and let him drop onto the bed. Thank goodness she had covered it with an old quilt. She went to the trunk where she kept her outdoor slicker and carried it to the bed. After some pulling and prodding she managed to get it between him and the quilt.

“Now let me see what you have wrong with you,” she said in the gentling voice she used with hurt animals. She peeled off his uniform and tossed it into the corner. His chest was thick with muscles but his waist was lean. Under his pants he wore white cotton underlinen, now soaked with blood. She cut it away above the wound and studied it for a moment. “Gunshot,” she informed him. Gently she reached beneath his leg. “Thank goodness it went all the way through. I wouldn’t want to have to dig for it.”

She examined the long cut on his upper left arm. “Must have been a sword. That’s my guess. It looks too long for a knife wound as hard as you must have been fighting.” He gave no sign of having heard her at all, but she was talking as much for herself as for him. “You know? I think you really might live after all.” Until now she hadn’t been all that sure.

Going to the pump in the kitchen, she drew water in a pail, then went back to him. “I need to get you cleaned up. I’ve seen small cuts go bad if they’re not tended properly. I guess large ones would be worse.” She dipped a soft rag into the water and began to sponge the wound. “At least you’ve stopped bleeding.”

She glanced at his face. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be unconscious again. “It seems to me they should have looked harder for you since you’re the captain. I guess that means your side lost. My family would be glad about that. Papa is about as Confederate as they come.”

She paused. “Papa. What on earth am I going to tell my papa?” She went back to cleaning battle grime from the soldier. “I just won’t tell him,” she said to assure the wounded man as much as herself. She just hoped Mama or Bridget didn’t decide to pay her a visit any time soon.

As she washed him, she couldn’t help but notice how well built he was. Even relaxed, his muscles were strong and firm, and his hands were large and capable. There was a virility about him that reminded her of the pumas that occasionally wandered near the settlement. He might be equally dangerous. Megan wondered if her father would shoot a man in his condition, and decided it wasn’t worth taking a chance. After working this hard to save him, she wasn’t going to lose him now.

After hesitating, she cut off the other leg of his underlinen. Short pants on such a large man looked odd, but she couldn’t get him clean with them on and she was reluctant to cut them off completely. She tore up a sheet to make fresh bandages and went into the kitchen to make a poultice of herbs to place on the wounds. Then she bandaged him again. By shoving and pulling, she managed to get the soiled slicker out from under him. The quilt hadn’t fared badly so she left him lying on it and pulled another one over him.

“I’ll be back,” she said in case he could hear her. “I have some butchering to do.”

Although she was already tired, she went back to the clearing and finished the job she had gone there to do. She beat her family to the scene by minutes.

“I was hoping you’d know to come get some meat,” Jane Llewellyn called from one of the other carcasses. “This will taste just like beef once it’s cured.”

“Not to me it won’t. I hate doing this.” Megan wondered what her mother would say if she had any idea what she had been doing only minutes before.

“We won,” Bridget said as she helped Jane with the horse. “Papa saw the Yankees running for all they were worth and our boys chasing after them. I wonder if Patrick was one of them.”

“If our Patrick, or Seth for that matter, were within a mile of here, he’d come see us all,” Jane said. “He’s likely in the next state.”

“I sure hope he’s safe.” Bridget looked over at the stained grass. “You think he’s safe, Megan?”

“Sure he is. We would have heard if he wasn’t.” Megan tried to sound positive for her sister’s benefit. There was no one to send word to her prisoner’s family that he was alive. It was odd to think she had a Yankee prisoner at her house. At the time she hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Be sure and wash this meat before you hang it up to dry,” Jane reminded Megan. “It’s not like butchering a hog where we hang it off the ground to dress it out. You can’t keep it clean like this.”

“I know, Mama.” She glanced around the clearing. Some of the other women from the settlement were arriving and gathering meat for themselves. Megan hoped they would be able to get enough to feed them through the winter. “Once mine is fully smoked, I’m going to hide it in the woods. I’m not taking any chances on losing this, too.”

“Those Yankees will take anything,” Bridget said angrily. “Can you imagine our soldiers stealing from people that don’t have enough to eat as it is? They wouldn’t ever!”

Megan wasn’t sure this was true so she didn’t comment. She had been hungry often since the war started and she didn’t think a soldier would be all that particular if there was food for the taking. Bridget just couldn’t bear to think Patrick would do such a thing. And, knowing Patrick as well as she did, Megan wasn’t sure that he would. Patrick was as good a man as the Hollow had ever produced.

“Hurry and get through, Bridget. The soldiers might come back and we don’t want trouble from them.”

“They’re long gone from here,” Megan said quickly. “There’s no reason for them to come back.” She wondered if that was true. She didn’t know all that much about soldiers, but wouldn’t someone come looking for a missing officer? But, she reasoned, their side wouldn’t know he was missing and the other would assume he had been killed or captured. Maybe no one would come looking for him at all.

When she had all her tow sacks full, Megan started carrying them to the smokehouse. On each trip the grade seemed steeper. The other women had finished, by the time she made the last trip, and a few of their husbands or sons had come to help them carry the bounty home.

As her mother had taught her, Megan washed the meat, then packed it in salt. Fortunately they still had salt in the settlement. She had heard of a family beyond Raintree that ran out of salt and had to scoop dirt off the smokehouse floor to pack around the meat. The dirt had salt in it from other curings but she couldn’t see how the meat would ever lose its gritty flavor.

She hung the meat onto the iron hooks that were suspended from the ceiling, then brought some hickory wood from the woodpile. Taking care not to make the fire too large, she started one burning in the pit in the center of the tall building. Stepping out into the fresh air, she saw the room fill with silver smoke, then she shut the door and latched it against marauding animals.

When she went into the house, she stripped off her clothes and bathed by the cabinet. Putting on a wrapper, she went in to see about the soldier.

He lay just as she had left him, but she could see the gentle rise and fall of his chest. He wasn’t dead. Every hour he lived through put him that much closer to his recovery, assuming the wounds didn’t turn septic. His skin was hot to the touch so Megan got a bowl of water and a cloth and sponged his forehead. A fever wasn’t unlikely in such a situation and she wasn’t worried. All the same, she sponged him until he was cool to her touch.

She sat in the ladder-back chair and studied him. He was a big man and almost filled the bed. What would he be like when he awoke? It suddenly occurred to her that she was quite isolated from the others and that he might be dangerous if he wasn’t unconscious. She shook her head in her own answer. He had lost too much blood. It would be a while before he would give anyone much trouble.

After a while she went into the kitchen and lit a lamp. The glow filled the cabin and turned the log walls to warm gold. She started a fire in the fireplace and soon the chill was gone. Since she had left the bedroom door open, she knew the man would be warm enough even if he kicked off the cover. The cabin wasn’t that large.

Megan frowned slightly. The cabin wasn’t large at all. Where was she going to sleep? The soldier was on the only bed. She went to the back room and opened the door. It was used to store the things she didn’t need every day. The mattress from Seth’s bedroom was tied into a roll in one corner. He had brought it to the cabin before he knew her family was stuffing them a mattress as a wedding gift. His family hadn’t needed it back so it was still here.

Going to it, Megan hauled it into the middle of the room and untied the cords that bound it. The mattress unrolled at her feet. The ticking was stained from rain that had blown in Seth’s window years before and it was old, but it was a bed of sorts. Certainly it would be more comfortable than the floor.

Megan got her gown from the hook in the bedroom and took it to the back room. Closing the door, she put on the gown and blew out the lamp before opening the door and sitting on the mattress. Unconscious or not, she didn’t trust the soldier and she kept her skinning knife close beside her. She pulled one of the extra quilts onto the mattress and listened to see if the soldier was stirring. There was no sound. She unpinned her hair and let it tumble around her as she sat there in the gloom. Still listening, she braided it into a thick dark-red plait before lying on the bed.

From the main room, the fireplace sent dancing light over the walls and floors. This was the first time since she had moved here that Megan hadn’t slept alone in the cabin. She wished it were Seth in the next room and not some stranger. Although she tried not to worry about Seth, she couldn’t help but worry at night when she had nothing else to occupy her mind. Was he safe? It was probably too much to hope that he was warm and comfortable. She had seen too many tattered Confederate uniforms to believe Seth’s was in better shape. Living outside was too hard on clothes.

At least she had a smokehouse full of meat. She gazed up at the shadowy rafters above her and planned where to hide it once it was cured.

Chapter Two

Megan knew it was important to keep her prisoner clean if he were to heal without complications. Why this was so, she couldn’t have said, but she had observed from cuts and scrapes she had received herself that cleanliness was important. If it was true for an everyday scrape, it should be doubly true for bullet and sword wounds.

She took a pan of hot water into the bedroom and stared down at the man. She had never in her life seen a naked man. The night she and Seth had made love in the clearing hardly counted, since the moon had given no light to speak of and he had kept his unbuttoned shirt on the entire time. She stepped nearer the soldier. She had to do what was necessary.

Not giving herself time to think, Megan pulled the covers back and sat on the side of the bed. He looked powerful even in repose and he was more handsome than she remembered from the day before. A day’s growth of beard darkened his jaw but did nothing to impair his looks. His hair was black and thick. She remembered his eyes had been a silvery gray.

Megan drew in a deep breath to give herself courage and bent to cut the underlinen down the side seams. Once they were washed, she could resew them, but she wasn’t sure how she would manage to put them back on him. As she pulled the cloth away, she couldn’t help but look at him. He was beautifully made, like the Greek statues she had seen in books. As she looked, he stirred and she hurriedly dipped the cloth in the wash water.

She washed him as well as she could without moving him. Beneath her fingers his skin was warm and supple, his muscles strong. She had also never seen a man with tanned skin all the way to his waist. Her father and the other men in the settlement never removed their shirts outside so only their hands and faces tanned. The brown of his skin for some reason made the man seem even more virile. She found herself imagining him chopping wood without his shirt, his muscles bunching and releasing. The thought made her blush and she tried to put it out of her mind. She wasn’t entirely successful.

Carefully, she removed the soiled bandages and dropped them on the floor with the underlinen. After they were boiled clean, she could use them again. She was glad to see neither of the wounds bled, though the edges were puffed and reddened. Was that normal in a severe wound? There was no one she dared to ask.

After she had cleaned the wounds as well as she could, she put fresh bandages on them, tied them into place and covered him with the quilt. To her surprise, she found her hands shaking. He affected her more than she thought possible. There was an element of danger about him even as he lay unconscious. She wondered what would happen when he finally woke up.

Megan lifted her head. Someone was coming. She could hear them running through the brush and into the yard. Hastily she left the room, pulling the door shut behind her. By the time she reached the main room, Bridget had run into the cabin and stopped in the middle of the room. She was out of breath and the freckles stood out on her pale skin. Her bright red hair was in a tangle all about her face.

Megan glanced at the door to her bedroom. It was closed and the soldier still hadn’t gained consciousness. Nevertheless, she ushered Bridget back onto the porch. “What’s wrong? Is Papa having one of those spells with his heart?”

Her sister shook her head. “It’s Seth!”

“Seth is at the settlement? He’s home?” Megan was a bit surprised that the news didn’t lift her spirits any more than it did. “I’ll get my shawl.”

“No, no, Megan. Listen to me for a minute.” Bridget put her hand on Megan’s arm to stop her. “It’s a letter, not Seth in person. He’s in a Yankee prison.”

Megan’s heart plummeted. “A prison?”

“He was captured last month. The letter only arrived today. He’s not injured or sick. Just scared.”

Megan sat on the ladder-back chair on the porch. A cold wind was blowing but she didn’t feel it. “Seth has always been afraid of being locked up. Remember how he was that time he was locked up in Raintree for getting drunk and breaking the chairs in that saloon? He hates being locked up.” Now that the news was sinking in, she was near tears.

“I think you should come to the house with me. Seth’s parents are there and you can read the letter yourself.”

“Yes. I’ll do that. Let me get my shawl.” She left Bridget on the porch and ran back inside.

In the bedroom she frowned at the soldier lying on her bed. It wasn’t fair that he was being carefully tended and doctored and Seth was in some prison. It made no difference that Seth wasn’t wounded or sick. She had heard about Yankee prisons and they were infamous for brutality and bad living conditions. She tried not to think about that. Throwing her heavy wool shawl about her shoulders, she hurried back to Bridget.

They ran most of the way to the settlement and were out of breath when they entered the house. The old, familiar smells enveloped Megan. Jane’s house always smelled of cooking and the strong lye soap she made every summer. The main room was crowded with the Brennans there. As usual, Aaron Brennan was pacing furiously and Sarah Ann Brennan sat stoically silent.

“Those damn Yankees have my oldest boy,” Aaron was saying in a loud voice. “There’s no telling what they’re doing to him.”

“Now don’t get so riled up,” Samuel Llewellyn said in a calming voice. “We don’t know Seth is being mistreated. He doesn’t say anything about it in his letter.”

“Those Yankees are capable of anything! Anything at all!”

Sarah Ann bent her head and sobbed as silently as possible. Jane went to her and put her arm around the woman. Sarah Ann leaned her head on Jane’s shoulder. Megan knew that the woman would get no comforting from her husband. It was well-known around the settlement that Aaron wasn’t kind to her. Megan also went to the crying woman and touched her other shoulder. Sarah Ann looked up, her small eyes red and swollen already. She patted Megan’s hand with the pudgy fist that held her soggy handkerchief.

“May I see the letter?” Megan asked. Aaron handed it to her with only a glance in her direction. He had always maintained that girls shouldn’t be allowed to read.

Megan managed to interpret Seth’s scrawling hand. He had never learned to spell properly but she could make out the words. “He’s being held just outside Corbin in Kentucky. Where is that?”

“It’s in the southern part, not far from the state line.” Samuel was watching her. “I’m real sorry, Megan.”

She managed a weak smile. “At least he’s out of the fighting. Had you thought of that, Mrs. Brennan? Seth can’t get shot in a prison.”

Sarah Ann looked up at her hopefully and the cane-bottomed chair creaked as she shifted her weight to sit straighter. “That’s true, ain’t it? He won’t be in no more battles if he’s fastened up in prison. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Aaron continued pacing, though there was barely enough room to move about. “We got to get him out!”

“Now be reasonable, Aaron. How are we supposed to get Seth out of a Yankee prison in Kentucky? Neither one of us even knows how to get there.”

“We could ask along the way. We know it’s north of here.”

Megan became thoughtful. They couldn’t hope to break him out of prison, but couldn’t they trade for him? Trade a Union captain, for instance?

“I wish I had me a Yankee here now,” Aaron growled. “I’d kill him before he knew which end was up.”

“So would I,” Samuel said. “They’re no good, the lot of them. Shoot first and ask questions later, that’s what I’d do.”

“Had you thought that our Seth is safer in prison?” Sarah Ann asked, still clinging to her only hope. “Had you, Aaron?”

“Shut up and let me think.” Aaron stomped to the other side of the room and Bridget shifted out of his way.

“Seth is safer in prison, ain’t he, Jane?” Sarah Ann persisted.

Jane glanced at Megan. “Yes, I’m sure he is.”

Megan looked across the room at Bridget. Her sister stood in the shadows, twisting her narrow gold wedding band. She knew Bridget was worrying about Patrick. Bridget worried about him almost constantly, even when there wasn’t bad news pertaining to the war. Their eyes met and Megan said, “Patrick’s all right.”

Bridget nodded but her eyes still looked haunted. Megan knew what she was thinking. If this could happen to Seth, it could happen to Patrick, and if Seth had been captured in battle that meant Patrick had been fighting, too. He could be dead or wounded and word just hadn’t reached them yet.

“Patrick ain’t got nothing to do with this!” Aaron said angrily to Megan. “This here’s about your man! You’d think you’d at least shed a tear for him!”

“She’s never cried easy,” Jane said quickly. “You know that, Aaron. Megan almost never cries.”

“I’m as worried about him as you are,” Megan told Aaron. “You have all had time to think about it, and it’s still sinking in to me.”

“I can’t leave my oldest to rot in some stinking Yankee prison,” Aaron repeated to Samuel.

Megan opened her mouth to tell them about the Yankee captain at her house, but she remembered what both men had said about shooting a Yankee on sight. Even if they didn’t shoot him, they certainly wouldn’t let her give him any degree of comfort or medicine. In the settlement, they lived by an eye for an eye. If the soldier wasn’t tended, he might die and she wouldn’t have any bargaining power. Megan kept quiet.

For the next hour the Brennans sat in the close quarters of the Llewellyn cabin and poured out their anger and grief. Sarah Ann cried until her eyes were mere slits in the puffiness of her face, and Aaron roared until he was hoarse. As word spread through the settlement, others came to offer their sympathy or righteous anger. Brother Grady, along with his mousy wife, Elvira, and their herd of children, arrived with a plate of steaming food for Sarah Ann and Aaron’s supper, as though Seth were dead and not merely imprisoned. Sarah Ann accepted it gratefully.

As soon as she gracefully could, Megan escaped to the peace and quiet of her own cabin. She was glad it was up the mountain and less accessible to the others. She had her own way of grieving and it didn’t involve a public display of tears.

For a long time she sat in the main room of her house, rocking in the uneven chair and thinking what this could mean. It was common knowledge that sickness ran rampant in prisons and that the food the men ate was no better than slop. Seth might never get out. The war had been expected to be of short duration, but it had already lasted four years and could go on until there were no men left to fight. She couldn’t depend on it ending quickly and Seth being released.

Her eyes drifted toward the closed door to her bedroom. She heard a small sound in there, as if the soldier were regaining consciousness. He would be her best bet for getting Seth back. Wouldn’t the Union army prefer to have one of their officers back than keep a Confederate private who would rather be home instead of fighting? Surely by now all the fight had gone out of Seth. It took whiskey to make him really cantankerous.

She heard the sound again. She stood and crossed the room to get the squirrel gun she kept behind the door in case of intruders. She was going to nurse the soldier back to health, no matter what it took.

When Caleb opened his eyes, he was looking at the barrel of a shotgun. He blinked, trying to make sense of it. A glance told him he was lying in a strange cabin. Holding the gun unwaveringly was one of the prettiest women he had seen since leaving Pollard’s Crossing, Ohio.

“How do you feel?” she asked, not lowering the gun.

“I hurt like... I hurt.” Caleb had been brought up from birth not to use strong language in front of ladies and he automatically censored what he had been about to say. “Where am I?”

“You’re in my cabin, Mr....”

“My name is Captain Caleb Morgan.” Speaking made him hurt from head to toe. “Who are you?”

“I’m Megan Llewellyn.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “Where do you hurt worse?”

“Everywhere. Could you put that gun down? I’m not going anywhere.”

She lowered the barrel. He tried to focus his eyes in spite of the pain. She was a small woman, not much taller than the rifle she carried. The light coming from the only window gave red highlights to her dark hair, and her skin was milky white. Her brown eyes glared at him as if she had a personal vendetta against him. Under different circumstances he would have found her extremely attractive.

Caleb lifted the quilt and looked down. He was naked under the covers and there were bandages on his right thigh and upper left arm. Reflexively he pulled the quilt up to cover himself. She didn’t seem to care that he was showing more skin than was decent. “How did I get here?” He was having trouble remembering what happened before he lost consciousness. Hadn’t he been in a battle?

“I brought you. You were shot in the leg and there’s a cut on your arm. I guess they didn’t find you when they came after the dead and wounded. You were in the woods by your horse.”

“Surely you didn’t carry me here all by yourself.”

“Yes, I did. You helped some.”

“I don’t remember it at all.” He tried to shift to a more comfortable position and she quickly raised the rifle again. “Will you calm down? I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to.” He pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, ignoring the pain that racked him. “Where’s your husband?”

“I’m not married.”

“Your parents, then. Surely you don’t live here alone.”

“Yes, I do. My parents and sister live downhill from here in the settlement.”

“Why would you live here all alone, as young as you are? Are you a widow?”

“I was promised to marry Seth Brennan, but he enlisted before the wedding. I’m living here to take care of our house until he comes home.”

“I see.” Caleb couldn’t have cared less about these details; he only wanted to put her at her ease so she would stop pointing the rifle at him. At this range, she would kill him with one shot.

“No, sir, I don’t believe you do. Seth was captured and is in a Yankee prison. I plan to trade you for him and get him back.”

“I see.”

“Stop saying that. I figure they would rather have you back than keep Seth. You’re a captain and he’s just a private.”

“That makes sense. Could you put that rifle away before it goes off? There won’t be much to trade if you pull that trigger.” He touched the bandage on his arm. “How badly am I wounded?”

“Bad enough to be unconscious since yesterday. Don’t pull on that bandage.”

“I don’t suppose this settlement of yours has a doctor, does it?”

“No, we take care of our own. I know how to make poultices and change bandages. Just don’t try running away. You wouldn’t get far on that leg.”

“I’m not in the mood to run anywhere. Where is my uniform?”

“I’ve got it soaking. You can’t wear it like it is. And I hid your boots so you may as well decide to stay put.”

“Why would I want to leave? You’ve already said that you’ll trade me for your fiancé.” He watched her carefully. If he could get her to let her guard down, he might be able to escape. His boots wouldn’t be that hard to find in a cabin no larger than this one must be. As for his uniform being wet, he had worn it wet every time it rained.

“I guess that makes sense.” She put her head to one side as if she were trying to decide if she should believe him. “Are you hungry?”

He nodded. He wasn’t, but he knew he would need to get his strength back if he was going to escape.

“I’ll be back after I fix you something to eat.” She turned and left the room.

Caleb waited until she was out of sight, then tried to swing his legs out of bed. Pain shot through him and he suppressed a groan. Carefully he pushed the quilt aside and probed the bandage on his leg. He was hurt more than he had thought. There was no way he could walk on his leg. He couldn’t even get out of bed. He refused to think that the bullet might have shattered the bone. If it had, he might never walk again. He lay back and closed his eyes.

Megan put the rifle in easy reach against the cabinet and reached in the water where the uniform was soaking. It was heavy and almost black in the water. She held it up to drain, then squeezed as much water as she could from the fabric. Did Seth have such a warm coat? She tried not to think about that.

When she had it as dry as possible, she took the uniform to the fire and hung it over the rocker to dry. She didn’t dare risk putting it on the line outside. To ensure it would dry quickly, she added another log to the fire. Although she had no intention of returning the uniform to him until he was well enough to travel, she couldn’t risk having Bridget or her mother come in and see it drying.

While she waited, she washed the long underlinen and bandages, then put the bandages in a pot to boil by the fire. She hung the underlinen on the chair with the uniform.

“Miss Llewellyn?” Caleb called from the other room.

“What is it?”

“Who won the battle?”

“I’d say we did. Mama said your side was in retreat when they were seen going down the mountain. I couldn’t tell from what I saw in the clearing. There was nothing left but dead horses.”

“Did you say my horse was dead?”

Megan went to the bedroom door. “If you were riding a big bay with a blaze face, he was. There was such a horse lying beside you. You’re lucky he didn’t pin you underneath him. I might not have been able to get you out.”

“I probably owe you my life. Thank you.”

Her eyes met his and she found it difficult to turn away. His silvery eyes were hypnotic and seemed able to look into her soul. “You’re welcome. I would have done as much for your horse, but he was already dead.”

“Thanks,” he said wryly.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant that I love animals and would have taken care of him. Were you fond of him?”

“Not very. He was a good animal, but I didn’t have him that long.”

Megan leaned against the doorjamb and folded her arms. “That just goes to show how different we are. I could love an animal at first sight. Especially if it was one I considered to be a ‘good animal.’”

“You learn not to be attached to horses in a war. I’ve had several shot out from under me. I stayed detached on purpose.”

“Can you do that? Remain detached? I’ve never learned how to turn my feelings on and off like that.” She knew she was goading him, turning his own words against him, but she was upset. “You take Seth, for instance. He’s fond of drink, and if the truth were told, of loose women as well. But I don’t stop loving him. I can’t. If I could, I might be less human.”

“Or you might be simply discerning. Why do you want to marry a man who drinks and runs after loose women?”

Megan frowned and straightened. “I don’t know why I told you that. I don’t want you talking about Seth.” His words echoed thoughts she had had in the past. More than once she had wondered why she loved Seth. Could it be merely habit? Or the fact that no other man in the settlement cared about her? “Get some rest,” she said sharply, and left the room.

Caleb didn’t close his eyes. She had a number of weaknesses. He was certain to be able to use one of them to escape. He had no intention of remaining here until she got around to trading him, even if such a thing were feasible. She was too quick at pointing a gun at him. What if she got word that Seth had died or escaped? She might shoot him just to be rid of him.

He looked around the room. It was small and the chinking between the logs seemed new. The floor was made of broad pine planks instead of dirt or split logs, so someone had gone to a great deal of effort to build it for her. What had she said? It was meant to be the house she and Seth would share. He wondered if Seth had built it himself. It was unusual for a new cabin to have more than one room. Rooms were usually added later as children arrived. In many cabins the children just slept in the loft until they were grown and had places of their own. For a cabin, this was quite grand.

It was also clean. After living in tents or on the open ground for the past four years, Caleb didn’t take cleanliness for granted. Once the war was over, he planned to bathe three times a day.

Megan’s clothing hung on pegs in one corner. There were three changes of dress, an everyday poke bonnet, a Sunday bonnet, a lightweight shawl. Beneath was a pair of polished black shoes with a pair of white cotton stockings rolled neatly in them.

Caleb turned his bead and studied the wall beside him. Unlike the outer walls, this one was of pine planking. A drawing of a raccoon beside a stream was nailed to it. The drawing was unusually good and he wondered who had done it.

A color caught his eye and he reached into the crack between the bed and wall and brought out a red book. Beneath it was a green one. Caleb was educated, as were his mother and sister, but he knew it wasn’t common to find mountain women who could read enough to enjoy a book. “Is this yours?” he called out.

“What now?” Megan came back to the doorway. When she saw the books in his hand, she froze.

“These books. Are you reading them?” He read the titles. “The Mysteries of Udolpho? You’re reading Mrs. Radcliffe? And this other one is on Greek mythology. Are they yours?”

“Give them to me.” She came to the bed and held out her hand. He noticed she was trembling.

Slowly he handed them over. “I’ve read both. Are you enjoying them?”

She glared at him. “There’s no need for you to tease me, Captain Morgan. I assure you I can read—probably as well as you can. And yes, I am enjoying them.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you angry.”

Megan turned on him, her books tucked protectively under her arm. “Why should I believe anything you say? I wasn’t born yesterday. I know men don’t like to know women can read. That’s why I hid them. How was I to know you’d come along and end up in my bed?” She realized what she had said and blushed.

Caleb smiled at her choice of words. “Can’t we talk like civilized people? We’ve found a common ground. We both read and we apparently like the same books. Have you read the others by Mrs. Radcliffe?”

Megan came a step nearer although her movements were reluctant. “Has she written others?”

“Three others. My favorite is Mysteries of Udolpho but I also enjoyed The Romance of the Forest.”

“I’ve read Udolpho three times. I bought it because it was the thickest one on the shelf.” She looked away. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this. You’re my prisoner. I couldn’t care less what books you read, or if you read at all.”

“Why were you hiding them?”

“That’s none of your business!” She turned and stalked from the room.

Caleb watched her go. In spite of himself he was intrigued by her. He had never known anyone to be so defensive about reading a book. Who had forbidden her to read? It was obvious someone had. Why else would she be hiding them in her own house? Caleb’s family were all voracious readers and he couldn’t imagine his sister reading in secret or hiding a book. Most of the girls he had known in Pollard’s Crossing read to some extent, some more than others. It wouldn’t have occurred to any of them to defend their right to read.

He moved his body lower in the bed. She was a mystery, his jailer. Under different circumstances, he would have enjoyed solving that mystery a great deal. Now, he only wanted to get out of here and either join his regiment or be sent home.

Home. It was like thinking of heaven. The war hadn’t reached Pollard’s Crossing, according to his parents’ letters, so it would be waiting for him just as he left it. He was determined to survive this hell of a war and go back home again. Just now survival meant rest. He could smell Megan cooking food in the other room and his stomach rumbled expectantly. He had to get his strength back and heal quickly so he could be on his way.

Chapter Three

Caleb watched as Megan sat on the side of the bed and started untying the bandage on his arm. She was trying to ignore the fact he was looking at her. “Tell me about yourself,” he said.

She glanced at him in surprise. “There’s nothing more to tell. You already know I’m promised to Seth Brennan and that I’m going to use you to get him back.”

“There’s more to you than that. Have you lived in the settlement all your life?”

“Of course. I was born there. So were my brother and sister.”

“You didn’t mention a brother yesterday. I gather he’s off fighting on the Confederate side?”

For a long time she was silent. “We don’t talk about Owen. And no, he’s fighting for the North.” She closed her mouth as if she had said too much.

Caleb was intrigued. “He’s on my side? Then why are your parents Confederate?”

“When Owen joined up Papa disowned him. As far as the settlement is concerned, Owen is dead.”

His voice softened. “Are those tears in your eyes?”

“No.” She turned away abruptly and reached for the pan of clean water.

“I can do this for myself,” he said.

“I don’t want to take a chance on you pulling the wound open. You’ve lost too much blood as it is.” She gently washed the wound clean and put another bandage around it.

Caleb automatically caught the quilt as she tried to pull it away. Her dark eyes met his. “I have to keep you clean. As for modesty, I’ve seen you already.”

Caleb surrendered the quilt. When she removed the bandage, he caught his breath at the pain. This wound was far more severe than the one on his arm. For a moment his senses reeled as if he were about to pass out.

“You’re still weak,” she said. “That’s why I’m doing this for you.” She kept the covers over as much of him as possible as she probed the swollen flesh circling the wound. “This one doesn’t look so good.”

He raised himself on his elbows and looked. Again his head spun. “Is the bullet still in it?” He dreaded her answer. If it was, she would have to cut it out.

She shook her head. “The bullet went clean through. I don’t think it even nicked the bone, at least not as far as I can tell. I had hoped it would mend as quickly as the other one. Of course it’s still fresh. It’s too soon to know if it’s going bad.”

Caleb had seen many wounds and he knew this one could be a problem. He had also seen too many amputations in field hospitals. “Promise me something. Don’t cut off my leg. If it goes bad, I might pass out and not know what you’re doing. Promise me.”

“I don’t plan to cut off your leg, Captain Morgan. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to do that.”

“Neither do most army doctors. If I’m going to die, I’d rather do it with all my parts intact. Promise me.”

Her eyes met his. “I promise.”

He lay back with relief. “During the first part of the war I was assigned to oversee the wounded and be certain they received medical treatment. I saw things in the hospital tent that will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.”

Megan lifted his leg enough to slide the fresh bandage beneath and tied it into place. Caleb bit back his pain. “I know that hurts,” she said, “but we have to keep it clean or it will go bad.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know it for sure, but cleanliness can’t hurt. When I cut myself, it seems to heal quicker if I keep the place clean.”

“I know some army doctors who should take lessons from you.” He tried to shift himself into a more comfortable position. There wasn’t one.

“Besides, I want you to heal fast so I can get Seth back sooner.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“You don’t seem eager to talk about yourself and I’m trying to have a conversation.” Caleb needed to know all he could find out about his captor if he was going to escape.

“There’s not much to say about him, either. We grew up together. Everybody has assumed all my life that we would marry.”

“Is that why you’re marrying him?”

“Of course not. I love him.” She frowned slightly, as if she were considering the question. “What about you? Are you married?” She ducked her head. “I was thinking that if you are, I could get word to her somehow that you’re alive. I’d want someone to do the same for me.”

“No, I’m not married.”

She looked at him with her level gaze. “Why not?”

He smiled at her straightforwardness. “I never met a woman I wanted to talk to all my life.”

Megan put her head to one side. “That’s a funny way to put it. Talking is really important to you, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it to you?”

“The men in my family rarely talk to their wives and daughters. They talk to each other, I guess, but only about crops and hunting. Things like that. What would you have to tell a woman that would take the rest of your life to say?”

“That I love her, for one thing. I wouldn’t marry her unless I did and that’s something that needs to be said often, assuming it’s true.”

Megan frowned and let her hands drop into her lap. “I never in my life heard Papa tell Mama he loves her.”

“Most likely that takes place at night when they’re alone.”

She laughed. “You never lived in a cabin, did you? There’s not much privacy.” She caught herself and stood. “I have things to do.”

“I like talking to you. Can’t they wait?”

She went to the door, the soiled bandages soaking in the pan of water. “I’m not used to talking so much. I have work to do.” She paused as if she were considering coming back into the room, then left, pulling the door shut behind her.

Caleb lay back on the pillows. She intrigued him. Certainly she was nothing like anyone he had ever known before. “Doesn’t Seth talk to you?” he called out.

She opened the door again. She had already put the bandages to soak in clean water and was drying her hands. “What?”

“I said, doesn’t Seth talk to you?”

“He talks to me when he has something to say. What sort of a question is that?”

“But does he talk just to hear what you think or feel?”

Megan laughed, then saw that he was serious. “Captain Morgan, we have a lot more work to do here in Black Hollow than you seem to realize. We don’t have time to stand around talking about nothing in particular. Who would wash the clothes and mend the fences and repair the shutters if we spent the day in conversation?”

“It seems to me Seth would want to know about your thoughts and feelings if he’s in love with you.”

“Seth loves me,” she said with a stubborn lift of her chin. “You don’t even know him. Why would you ask such a thing?”

“You don’t seem to be accustomed to talking to a man.”

“Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to talk to the enemy. Have you thought about that, Captain Morgan?” she retorted.

“Call me Caleb. It seems only right since I’m sleeping in your bed.” A thought suddenly struck him. “There is another bed, isn’t there? For you?”

“I’m quite comfortable in the back room on a pallet.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you had two bedrooms—with beds.”

Megan gave him an exasperated look. “Does this look like a palace to you? I have one good feather bed and you’re on it. When I have children and they grow old enough to need a bed, Mama and I will stuff another ticking. Until then, it would just go to waste.”

“Why didn’t you put me on the pallet instead of in here?”

“I guess I just didn’t have time to think about it. You were hurt so bad and this was the closest bed.”

“But you left me on it, even after I started getting better.”

“Captain Morgan...”

“Caleb.”

“If you want to sleep on the floor, I’d be glad to oblige. But right now, I have a wash to do and a fire to tend in the smokehouse. I can’t stand around here all day and do nothing but talk.” She turned and pulled the door firmly shut behind her.

Caleb sighed and opened The Mysteries of Udolpho. He started on the first page. The familiar words greeted him. His convalescence would be long if there was no one willing to talk to him. Until now he had never realized how much he enjoyed conversation. “On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony...” he began reading.

“Here are your things,” Megan said, holding out a handful of the objects Caleb had carried in his pocket. There was a pocket watch, the money left from his last paycheck, a locket. “She’s very pretty.” Megan had the grace to blush. “I looked inside. Normally I wouldn’t have pried, but under the circumstances...”

“If I can share your bed, you can examine the content of my pockets. I think she’s beautiful.”

“Is she your intended?”

“No, she’s my sister.”

Megan found herself smiling. “Your sister?”

“Her name is Felicity, but that’s a contradiction. She’s full of mischief. Since she’s the youngest, we’ve all spoiled her shamelessly.” His expression told Megan he loved his sister and didn’t regret the spoiling in the least.

Megan wondered what it would be like to be pampered. Also, this talk about brother and sister made her miss Owen a great deal.

“Were you spoiled as a child, Miss Llewellyn?”

“Certainly not. And you may call me Megan. After all, you gave me permission to call you by your first name so it’s only proper.”

“And after all, I’m sharing your bed.”

“Will you stop saying that?” She frowned at him in exasperation. It put too many ideas into her head. In the few days he had been here, she had started to find him far too interesting. “In the Hollow we don’t believe in spoiling children. It only leads to trouble later.”

“I don’t believe that it does. How can it hurt to love a child?” His gray eyes gazed into hers and she had the uncanny impression that he could see her thoughts.

She turned away. “I was loved. Just not spoiled.”

“I would think Seth would pamper you a great deal.”

Megan didn’t want to talk about Seth to Caleb. He always came off in a bad light. “I’ll remind him to do that as soon as he comes home again,” she said tersely.

“If you were my fiancée, I would treat you as if you were the most beautiful and the most cherished woman in the world.”

She looked at him in surprise.

Caleb looked away this time. “Sorry. I guess I overstepped the bounds. It’s none of my business how Seth or anyone else treats you.”

“That’s all right.” She was dismayed at the surge of warmth his words had caused. Had he been able to tell? She was afraid to meet his eyes. Reluctantly she came farther into the room. “Seth means well. He really does. I’m a plain person, Capt—Caleb. I’m not used to frills, nor was I brought up to want them. Seth is the sort of man I’ve known all my life. He’s like my father and my uncles and my cousins. He fits into my life. It’s not natural for men like Seth to pamper their women.”

“I think all women bloom when it’s obvious that they’re loved. I couldn’t love a woman and not treat her as if she were a fragile treasure.”

Megan laughed. “Fragile treasures don’t haul water from wells and hoe gardens. I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a woman like that. There aren’t any fine ladies in the Hollow.”

He smiled at her as if he disagreed with her. For a moment Megan wondered if he were trying to sweet-talk her in order to get her to free him. But that made no sense. He couldn’t walk as far as the road, let alone all the way to a Union camp. Besides, she had already told him she would return him to his people in exchange for Seth as soon as possible. No, she must have misunderstood him altogether.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Tell me about your sister. Does she like to sew?”

“Yes, but she prefers to read. Felicity has loved reading all her life. Even before she learned to make out words, she had me read her stories. Mama would have been appalled if she knew half of what we read. Felicity’s head was so filled with pirates and sunken treasures, she had trouble sleeping.”

Against her will, Megan was intrigued. She went to the straight-backed chair and picked up her darning. “Your parents didn’t object to her reading?”

“Of course not. They encouraged it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t see how that can be. I know Bridget and I are busy all day with chores and have been ever since I can remember. Mama would never have the time to sit down and read. Neither would Papa, for that matter. How is it that your family has all this spare time?” She expertly dropped the darning egg into the sock and started making the tiny stitches to repair the heel.

“I suppose we just live differently.”

“I suppose. Do you live in a city?”

“Yes. Pollard’s Crossing isn’t as large as, say, Chicago by any means, but it’s still a city.”

“You’ve seen Chicago?” Megan’s fingers stopped momentarily.

“Several times. Have you?”

“No,” she said with a laugh at the idea. “I’ve never been beyond Raintree.” She glanced at him to see if that lowered her in his estimation. He was only looking at the locket he still held in his hand.

“I think you and Felicity would be friends.”

“We have so much in common,” she said wryly.

“Actually you do. She loves Mrs. Radcliffe’s books above all else. She can even quote complete passages from Udolpho.”

“How old is she?”

“Nineteen.”

“We’re almost the same age.”

“I thought you must be.”

“I’m quite close to my sister, Bridget. She doesn’t like to read but she knows I do and she’s helped me hide my books from time to time. She can read,” Megan added quickly, “but she prefers not to.”

“Does she have red hair, too?” he asked with a smile.

Megan automatically reached up and touched her hair. Red hair wasn’t considered a beauty trait in the Hollow. “Yes. Hers is even more red than mine. We get it from Mama.”

“And does Owen also have red hair?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve told you I’m not supposed to talk about him. He’s dead to the family. But his hair is the same color as mine. Dark red.”

“Auburn,” Caleb said. “That’s what I’d call it. It’s beautiful.”

“You shouldn’t say such personal things. We’re stuck here together until you get well. I can’t allow you to be so intimate.”

“We’re only talking about your brother’s and sister’s hair coloring. That’s not too intimate, surely.” He sounded innocent but she caught the teasing sparkle in his eyes. If she were a different person in a different place, she would think he was actually flirting with her.

“Are you forgetting I’m promised to Seth?”

“Not for a single minute.”

She laid her darning in her lap and looked at him. “You confuse me. You’re not like any man I know. Not at all.”

“Yes, I’m certain that’s true. In my family we don’t believe in working a woman from sunup to sundown.”

With a frown she said, “That’s not fair. You don’t know my family or what we’re like.”

“That’s true. I apologize.” But he was smiling as if he were enjoying teasing her.

Megan put her darning back into her workbasket. “I have other chores to do while it’s daylight. You’ll have to amuse yourself. Memorize Udolpho while I’m gone.”

He opened it to the back. “All seven hundred pages?” he asked with a grin.

“I have a lot of chores. You’ll have time.” She left him and went into the other room.

For a minute she leaned against the wall, feeling its bumpy sturdiness and trying to remember who she was and, more important, who he was. This was her enemy. She couldn’t indulge in a flirtation with him even if she wasn’t engaged to Seth. She felt unfaithful as it was. What had she been thinking of to sit in the bedroom with him and do her needlework, just as if he were a family member? Megan pressed her fingers to her forehead and closed her eyes. After this she would be more careful.

She went out onto the porch. A cold wind had blown in the night before and the air had a snap of winter in it. She pulled her knitted shawl closer about her shoulders. There was kindling to chop and corn to be shelled. A shutter had worked loose during the night’s wind and she tried to put it back into place. It dropped at an angle again. She would have to go out to the shed beside the smokehouse and find a hammer and one of the square nails Patrick made for the settlement. It was hard for one person to keep up a house.

She frowned at the window set in the bedroom wall. How had she believed even for a moment that Caleb’s womenfolk had time to sit around and read? Even in a city there must be shutters to mend and fire to be fed and corn to be shelled. These things didn’t tend to themselves. He must have been teasing, thinking she was as green as grass in the spring. With an angry movement, Megan knotted her shawl more securely and went down the steps.

The woodpile was at the side of the house nearest the settlement. She bent and put a pine log on the large stump she used as a chopping block. With her hatchet, she slivered the pine into long splinters that would easily catch fire and ignite the heavy oak logs in the fireplace. The pine was from an old tree that had been felled during a storm the winter before and had rotted to the point of exposing its core. Heart of pine was the best kindling to be found.

As she chopped, she noticed a flash of yellow coming through the woods and looked up to see Bridget crossing the clearing. Megan waved to keep her sister from going into the house. Bridget veered to join her.

“Mama wants to know if you need any of the meat we’re smoking? She put by a sizable amount and you can have some if you want it.”

“No, but tell her I appreciate the offer. I brought up all my smokehouse can hold so I have plenty to see me through the winter. Assuming the soldiers don’t find it.”

Bridget nodded. “I can’t help but think of Patrick when I see them passing. Our boys look so hungry and so poorly clothed. It’s all I can do not to send them off with all our food and extra wraps. Patrick must look just like them.”

“I know. I share stew with them whenever I can. But we don’t know that all the states are like this. Maybe in Georgia things are better. News never reaches us until it’s old. Patrick may have plenty to eat and warm clothes as well.” They both knew this wasn’t the case, but Bridget needed to hear it.

“This is true. I pray for him every night. Maybe some Confederate mother or sister is taking care of him for me.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“We’ve hidden our smoked meat. Have you done that? If you haven’t, Papa says he’ll come over tomorrow and help you.”

“I’m doing it today. I wanted to smoke it as long as possible.” Megan stacked the irregular sticks of kindling in the box she stored them in. “It’s so different from curing hogs. I hope it tastes all right. There was no time to let it age in salt. I just rubbed it with black pepper and borax to keep the skippers out and hung it up.”

“So did we. It might be tough, but we can boil it tender, I guess. Nobody ever handed down a recipe for horse meat that I know of.”

“I sure never thought I’d be reduced to eating a horse.” Megan picked up the kindling box and paused. She couldn’t take it into the house and risk Bridget finding Caleb. Bridget would try to keep the secret, but her mouth sometimes out-raced her mind. Megan put the box back down on the ground and started splitting more kindling.

“How much kindling do you need?” Bridget asked.

“If I don’t do it now, I’ll just have to do it later. Kindling will keep.”

“I almost forgot. Papa said he saw a Union patrol down the mountain yesterday. He says for you to be real careful. They may be coming this way.”

“I’ll watch out for them.” Megan wondered if they could be looking for Caleb. By now he would have been missed and someone might have a way of knowing he wasn’t captured or buried.

“I’ve got to be going now. Mama says she’ll be expecting you for dinner on Sunday.”

“I always eat there on Sunday. Why would she have you remind me?”

“I don’t know. You know how Mama is. She has the sight just like her grandmother did. Maybe she saw something keeping you from coming down.”

“Tell her I’ll be there.” From time to time Megan had also experienced the family phenomenon. She always became uneasy whenever a death was about to occur. She had never told Bridget because her sister would only have worried.

“Anyway, she said to tell you she expects you for dinner.”

“Tell her not to fret.” Megan frowned slightly. Did her mother somehow suspect that Caleb was in Megan’s cabin? Frequently Jane knew things no one had told her, and on occasion Megan had experienced this herself. As far as she knew, Bridget had no glimmerings of the sight at all and was as uninformed as their father in that respect.

When Bridget was gone, Megan took the brimming box of kindling into the house. Since she rarely allowed her fire to go out, there was enough kindling to last her a year. She dropped it beside the hearth and put another log on the fire.

A glance at the window told her that evening was only a couple of hours away. She shouldn’t have wasted the precious minutes of daylight talking with Caleb earlier.

She went back outside and to the shed where she kept the tools and ropes needed around the farm. Taking several lengths of rope, she went into the woods. After tying a chunk of wood to the end of a rope, Megan tossed it over the highest limb possible. Then she went back to the smokehouse and brought out the first of the smoked meat, tied carefully in a tow sack.

She tied the sack of meat to the end of the rope and hauled it up into the top of the tree, being careful not to leave it suspended too close to other limbs. She didn’t want to go to all the trouble of hiding it from soldiers and have some predator eat it.

When the end of the rope was tied to the trunk of the tree, she looked up. If a person didn’t know where to look, it was as good as invisible.

For the next two hours she repeated the process until every spare roast was tied in the treetops and hidden as well as she could manage. She ached from the unaccustomed effort and was glad to fasten the smokehouse door and go back to the cabin.

As she approached, she heard voices. Fear congealed in her veins as she rounded the corner and saw three Union soldiers entering her yard. The sun hung low over the treetops and night would soon be falling. What did they want at her house?

“Yes?” she asked in a cold tone. Had they heard Caleb inside? They could have been in there with him for all she knew.

“We’re looking for food, ma’am,” one said. None of them were smiling.

She kept her distance. “So am I. Your army already cleaned me out.” She jerked her head in the direction of the smokehouse. “See for yourselves.”

The man in charge motioned for one of the men to go look. “We’re also looking for a man named Captain Caleb Morgan. Have you seen him around here?”

“I don’t know of any Morgan family living in these parts.” She deliberately made herself sound a bit slow of wit. That had worked in the past. “You could ask over to Raintree. The Morgans might live there.”

“No, this was a Union soldier, not a family,” the other man said impatiently. “We’re trying to see if he was killed or captured.”

“I haven’t killed anybody.” Megan crossed her arms over her chest. “If you find any food, I’d appreciate it if you’d share it with me.”

“Not much chance of that,” the second man said again.

His superior frowned at him. To Megan he said, “I apologize for my men. These are hard times for all of us.”

Especially those of us who don’t get to ride around on horses and steal from women who are trying to keep body and soul together. She frowned at them in the fading light.

The other man returned. “The smokehouse is empty. It smells like smoke though. Maybe she heard us coming and is hiding the meat.

Megan held her arms out. “Do you think I could hide much under this shawl? Maybe it’s in my shoe?”

Behind her, she heard a voice call out. Caleb had heard the men. She stepped up on the porch, blocking their way. “Since there’s nothing to steal, I won’t object to you riding away.”

“Is that a man in there?” the second soldier asked. “Who do I hear?”

“You hear my brother. He’s a bit slow in the mind and the army doesn’t want him. He’s been on a three-day drinking binge. If you’ll take him off my hands, you can have him.” She held her breath.

The officer grinned. “No, we aren’t recruiting drunken brothers today. We’ll be on our way.”

“Wait!” she could hear Caleb shouting. “I’m Captain Morgan!”

To cover his words, Megan bumped against the washtub that hung on the porch and it fell with a deafening clatter. The soldiers’ horses shied away. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve always been clumsy.” She made more noise as she wrestled the tub back onto its peg.

When she turned around the men were riding away. Megan hurried into the house and sighed with relief as she shoved the bolt in place on the door. She leaned her forehead against the wood and closed her eyes. That had been too close. If she had been a bit slower, they would have found her precious cache of meat and it was only luck that they hadn’t discovered Caleb.

“You can quit shouting. They’ve gone,” she called to him as she went to the pump to wash her hands.

“Get in here!” he commanded. “You kept them from hearing me on purpose!”

“Of course I did! Do you take me for a fool?” She pushed open the bedroom door and frowned back at him. “You’re my prisoner. I’m not giving you up until I can trade you for Seth.”

“They might have known where to find a doctor! Not one of those army sawbones, but a real doctor.”

“More likely they would have put you on one of their horses and you’d have bled to death before they reached Raintree. You couldn’t travel if you tried!”

“At least I would be with my own army!”

She glared at him. “Is it better to die with your army, with strangers, than to stay here and be doctored back to health and traded? I think not. Certainly it wouldn’t serve me as well.”

“What about me?” he demanded.

“You’re my prisoner,” she said loudly and slowly so it would sink in. “I’m not giving you up until it suits me.”

He was still arguing but she closed the door. This was turning out to be more difficult than she had originally supposed.

She put a bit of the horse meat on to boil for supper, then went to the back room. This was farther from the road and had a door that could be latched. She had wondered at the time why her father had fitted a latch on it, but now she was glad he had. He had said it might come in handy. She hoped he would never guess in what way. Not until she had Seth home safely.

Her pallet lay in the middle of the floor, its covers neatly in place. What would it take to make a proper bed out of it?

With a great deal of difficulty, Megan managed to maneuver four kegs from the barn into the back room. Then she went out to the smokehouse. Taking a hammer, she knocked the pins from the hinges and dragged the door back to the house. It was long past dark by the time she finished. With all her muscles aching, she pulled the pallet up onto the door and braced all of it in the corner. It was pretty sturdy. Would it be strong enough to hold a man Caleb’s size? There was only one way to find out.

She went back into the bedroom and caught the wrist of his good arm.

“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously.

“You’re moving. I’m not sharing my bed with you anymore.” She pulled him up and helped him swing his feet over the side. “Wrap the quilt around you,” she said as she drew his good arm over her shoulders. “Stand up.”

Caleb did as she told him, though she knew he must have questions. He was as heavy as she remembered, but he at least tried to hop on his good leg. It was no easy job getting him into the back room, but at last he was leaning against the makeshift bed. “This is your room.”

“Why?”

“Because I can lock this door.” She helped him sit on the bed and was glad to see that it remained in place. She looked up at his face and saw he was sweating from the pain but he hadn’t cried out. “I’ll soon have you some stew to eat.”

As she was about to leave, he caught her wrist. “You should have given me to the soldiers.”

She looked into his eyes. In the dimness of the room they were almost as black as his hair. He seemed so male and so large when she had to look up to see his face. “Lie down,” she said as she hastily moved away.

As she scooped stew into her gourd dipper, she reflected that he was right. It might have been better to let the soldiers find him. She was almost afraid of what she was already thinking about him and feeling for him, and he had only been there a few days. How would he affect her by the time he had been there long enough to heal?

Chapter Four

Megan was peeling potatoes when she heard the bell being rung at her parents’ place. She dropped the potato into cold water so it wouldn’t turn dark and dried her hands on her apron. A small frown creased her forehead. Why would someone be ringing the bell?

“What’s that sound?” Caleb called out.

“It’s the alarm bell. Something is wrong.” She untied her apron and hung it on its peg. “I have to go. They wouldn’t risk letting strangers know the settlement is there unless they were calling everyone together for a reason.”

She left the cabin and hurried down the road into the Hollow. As she neared, she could see others converging on her parents’ cabin. They all seemed as mystified as she was. Had there been an attack by the Union army? If that was the emergency, why ring the bell in such a way as to bring the women as well as the men? The settlement had long ago worked out a system of ringing the bell in a certain pattern to call only the men.

Megan hurried up the steps and through the crowd into the cabin. The Brennans were seated at the table with her parents. When she came in, they all looked at her.

For a moment she thought they had somehow found out about her prisoner and were gathering to kill him and call her to task. She stopped and stared back at them. “What is it?” she asked.

Samuel held out a sheet of paper. It was torn and badly smudged but she recognized Seth’s almost illegible handwriting. She took the letter and sat in the closest chair.

Conditions are real bad here. Folks are dying right and left of me. Mostly it’s prison fever, but lately some have come down with the measles. It might not be much of nothing for a child, but in a grown-up, it’s a killer.

The guards here are no better than animals. Men get beaten regularly and they leave us to lie in rags. When it rains, which it does more than I thought possible, water stays on the floor, seems like forever. We have to lie in it or stand. It’s real cold, too. No fires here to speak of because there’s no way to get wood. I don’t rightly know what’s going to happen when we get the first freeze.

I sure wish I was home. Signing up was the worst thing I ever done. When I get back to the Hollow, I’m not ever going to leave. Tell Ma I said hello and that I’ll be home as soon as they let me go.

Megan looked up and met Sarah Ann’s eyes. Seth’s mother was crying softly and his father stood behind her, a scowl on his face. “My boy’s in the cold and wet,” Sarah Ann said in a broken voice. “They’s treating him worse than we would an animal.”

“Yankees aren’t as good as animals,” her husband growled. “That’s a fact everybody knows.”

“Maybe we could send him some warm clothes and firewood,” Megan suggested. She was feeling sick from picturing the conditions Seth was living in. Why had Seth sent such a letter, when he must know there was nothing they could do but worry about him? Didn’t he care what a letter like this would do to people who loved him?

“Use your head, girl,” Aaron Brennan snapped. “Do you reckon the jailers would just hand them over to him? Even if he got them, somebody else would likely take them away from him. Seth may be scrappy, but he’s not real big.”

“I know. I just don’t know what else to suggest.” Megan folded the letter and slowly handed it to Sarah Ann. Had anyone else noticed that Seth hadn’t mentioned her at all? She felt angry with herself for noticing, but shouldn’t he have? He had remembered to send a message to his mother. How much more trouble would it have been for him to include her own name as well?

Sarah Ann unfolded the letter and stared down at it. She couldn’t read, but it was a link with her son.

Benjamin Grady, the preacher for the settlement, stepped forward. “We’ll pray for him. That’s the most we can do.”

There was a shuffling noise as everyone went to their knees. Megan could hear the people on the porch doing the same. The crowd was unnaturally quiet aside from the occasional cough.

“Lord, our boy Seth Brennan is in the enemy’s hands. We ask that you look out for him and protect him in Pharaoh’s land. Seth is the apple of his ma and pa’s eye and we all want him back. His bride-to-be can’t rest for wanting to see him.”

Megan glanced up but the preacher wasn’t looking at her. She hastily closed her eyes again as the prayer droned on. Is that how everyone saw her? Yearning to see Seth? It bothered her that she hadn’t spent more time in miserable loneliness and aching for his return, now that she heard Brother Grady put it like that. Was she unnatural for not missing him more? Although she would never have admitted it, she spent more time worrying about Patrick than Seth.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Seth. She had never loved anyone but him. But they had known each other all their lives and she had always taken him for granted, even when he went off to war. It occurred to her that this could mean that she didn’t really love him at all, but she put the thought aside. This was no time for traitorous thoughts like that. Of course she loved Seth. Even if she didn’t, she didn’t want him mistreated.

Brother Grady was known for his long-winded prayers. When he prayed over a matter, he kept after it until he was certain he had God’s attention. Megan’s knees were numb by the time he said, “Amen.” She heard sighs of relief as everyone got to their feet. Aaron had to help Sarah Ann haul her bulk back into the chair, where she sat rubbing her knees and staring at the letter.

Questions broke out all over the room about Seth and what was going to happen to him. Megan listened in silence. The questions were directed at the men, not her. Again she noticed she was on the outside, looking into Seth’s life. Aside from mention in Brother Grady’s prayer, no one seemed to connect her with Seth, even though they were promised to each other. She told herself it was only because almost every family in the settlement was related to the Brennans in some way and they were all naturally worried about their kin. All the same, she felt excluded.

In the cabin Caleb was struggling to get out of bed. He had no idea what emergency had called the settlement together, but there was a chance that Union troops were in the area. He managed to swing his legs over the side and stand. For a moment he waited, giving the pain time to subside. Then he reached for his neatly folded clothes, which Megan had left on a nearby chair. Once he was dressed he felt better. Caleb wasn’t a prude, but there was something intimidating about being naked in a strange house.

His leg felt as if fire were coursing through it as he pulled on his underlinen, then his pants. He shrugged into his jacket and buttoned it as he limped to the door. He was right; Megan had left without remembering to lock it. He opened it and peered out.

The cabin was small, and a low fire burned in the fireplace. There was little furniture—only a rocker, a table and a couple of the straight-backed chairs that every house hereabouts contained. Bleached feed sacks hung as curtains at the windows and there was a braided rug on the floor, its colors still new and bright.

Caleb moved slowly over the floor, wincing every time he had to put his weight on his bad leg. He knew he couldn’t hope to walk far on it, but if Union troops had passed the house once, they might do so regularly. If he could make it to the road and away from the house, someone might see him.

He reached the door and paused to catch his breath. Caleb hated feeling so weak. His muscles were trembling and he had only walked a few feet. He was beginning to realize how badly he was hurt and that his concern of never healing properly might be well-founded. He had been there almost two weeks and he couldn’t see much improvement at all in his leg. Up until now he had thought Megan was exaggerating his condition.

Caleb opened the door and a blast of cold air hit his face and slicked through his heavy wool jacket. He had no coat and wouldn’t steal one of Megan’s quilts for warmth. Especially since that would make him easier to see.

The porch steps were particularly difficult and he half fell down them. For a moment he held to the porch and caught his breath as waves of pain ripped through him. Had he pulled the wound open again? He looked at his leg, but it wasn’t bleeding. Limping painfully, he started across the yard.

Megan couldn’t get away until everyone had exhausted their questions and suggestions and agreed that there was nothing they could do to get Seth back or to ease his suffering. More than once she had started to tell them about the prisoner in her cabin, but she was too afraid they would lynch him first and think later. No, this was the only way she could help Seth, and she was determined that nothing would undermine her plan.

She took a loaf of bread from her mother, who seemed to be the only one other than Bridget who was thinking about Megan’s feelings. Bridget hugged her and patted her shoulder, her blue eyes glistening with unshed tears. Megan nodded. The women in her family were silent when they were most emotional.

Holding the bread under her arm, Megan started the climb to her cabin. Her thoughts were on Seth and his miserable conditions. Were the Confederate prisons as bad? Megan didn’t know and she knew not to pose the question to anyone in the Hollow. It would seem traitorous to suggest their own men were as inhumane to their prisoners as were the Yankees. All the same, Megan wondered.

As soon as she topped the ridge, she saw Caleb struggling up the road ahead. She let one of Owen’s expletives escape her lips and she ran to him. “What are you doing out of bed?” she demanded once she was beside him.

He ignored her and tried to drag himself farther up the road.

“What are you trying to do? Kill yourself?” She darted in front of him. “Look at you! You’re as pale as a sheet!” Without giving him opportunity to argue, she slipped his arm around her shoulders and turned him back in the direction of the cabin. “You must be as crazy as a bedbug to try to walk to Raintree in your condition. What if you fell on that leg?”

He didn’t answer, and when she looked up at him, she saw a white line of pain around his lips. “You must be purely crazy!” she muttered.

After several long minutes, she had him back inside the cabin. “Don’t you know someone could have seen you?” she demanded as she helped him back to his bedroom.

“That was the general idea,” he finally answered. “I was hoping to see Union troops.”

“You would have a long way to go before that happened. It’s a wonder no one from the settlement decided to walk me home. The only people around here are Confederate and they would rather shoot you than not.”

“Then the emergency wasn’t Union soldiers in the area?” He braced himself on the doorframe to the bedroom.

“No, it wasn’t. It was a letter from Seth. Can you stand here while I put a fresh sheet on the bed? Of course you can. You were bent on walking to Raintree, weren’t you?” She left him at the door and stripped the sheets from his bed. “Of all the fool things for you to do!”

She moved quickly, but he was trembling visibly by the time she had his bed ready. She helped him limp to it and sit on the raised pallet. “Your skin looks like a wax candle!” She was deeply concerned. “Why are you being so quiet? You’re never quiet.”

“I’m hurting like hell,” he said through clenched teeth, “and I’m right back where I started.”

“And you’re staying here, too.” She helped him take off his jacket and the trousers that were binding his leg, but left him his underlinen. A fine sheen of sweat lay on his pale skin. He wasn’t lying about the pain. Did it usually take gunshot wounds so long to start healing? Megan couldn’t ask anyone and Caleb apparently didn’t know either.

When he was lying in bed and able to relax through the pain, he said, “You say you got another letter from Seth?”

Megan hesitated. “His parents did. They let me read it.”

He looked at her. “He wrote them, not you?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” Megan bent to pick up the sheets she had taken from the bed. “Most likely he didn’t have two pieces of paper or he was in a hurry to send it out. Besides, he knows his mother worries more than most would.”

“Surely he enclosed a message for you.”

She glanced at him. He seemed genuinely curious. “Now you’re talking too much again. I guess that means you’re feeling better.” She left the room and took the sheets out to the service porch in back.

She sat on the back steps, despite the cold, and hugged her knees to her chest. Why hadn’t Seth at least sent her a greeting? How long would that have taken? For that matter, why had he sent the letter at all? Didn’t he know it would upset his family and only make his mother worry more? How like Seth to think only of himself.

Megan hated these thoughts but she knew they were true. Seth had always put himself first. Even that night in the clearing when they had made love the first and only time. He must have known then that he was considering joining the army and he had taken her anyway, even if a baby might have been the consequence. What on earth would she have told her parents and everyone else in the settlement? Sex before marriage was strictly forbidden, even to couples who were engaged. But Seth had wanted her and he hadn’t thought beyond that.

For the first time, Megan let herself think of her future if she backed out of marrying Seth. For one thing, she would probably have to give up her cabin and move back in with her parents. It made more sense for Bridget and Patrick to have the cabin than for her to stay there alone. Megan liked being away from the others, even if it was lonely or even frightening at times. Cabins were too difficult to build and the men’s time was too precious for her father to be willing to build Bridget and Patrick another one.

Megan rested her chin on her knees. On the other hand, if she married Seth, would she be happy? She was rather surprised to realize she had never thought about that before. Like everyone else in Black Hollow, she had always assumed she would marry him. Her future had been more or less ordained since she was twelve or so. The only real surprise had been that she and Seth had waited so long to announce their intentions of marrying. Did that mean he had reservations as well? Megan had certainly never thought of that. Maybe he didn’t love her at all, but was simply taking the easy route.

The chilling wind crept into her and Megan got up shivering. She knew her thoughts were more the cause of her trembling than was the temperature. These were thoughts she should never have had. Not when she was living in the cabin, using the things from her hope chest and waiting for Seth’s return. She would be shunned if she backed out now. Assuming, of course, that Seth returned at all. He had said in his letter that men were dying around him every day.

She went into the house and finished peeling the potatoes to boil. Doing routine work helped. It was harder to think when she had to keep her mind on the sharp knife and her fingers.

“Megan?” Caleb called.

“What is it?” She dropped the potatoes into boiling water and went into the room.

“Who drew these pictures?”

She looked at the sketches she had hung from tacks on the wall. “I did. Why?”

“You drew them? They’re good.” He was studying them as if he hadn’t noticed them before.

“There’s no need for you to make fun of me. I’m busy.” She turned to leave but he called her back.

“I’m not teasing you. Why do you always get so defensive?”

“Why would I believe you mean these things? I’m not a fool. Didn’t you just try to escape? Don’t you remember we’re enemies?”

“If you were in my place, wouldn’t you try to get away? As for us being enemies, that’s not the way I think of you.”

She frowned at him. “You must think I don’t have any sense at all. You’re North and I’m South. If that’s not enemies, I don’t know what to call it.”

“You might think of me as a person.”

“I’m busy.” Again she turned to leave but this time she paused of her own choice. “You really think my drawings are good?”

“Of course I do. They look as if they could walk off the paper.”

Megan went farther into the room. “I like to draw. Papa says it’s a waste of time and that it’s sinful to waste anything. But sometimes I just can’t help doing it.” She glanced at him to see if he was laughing at her. “I only draw when I’ve finished with the chores for the day.”

“You don’t have to make excuses for me.” His eyes met hers and she had to look away. “I’ve seen Felicity’s drawings and they aren’t nearly as good as yours, but she’s considered to be quite talented.”

Megan went to a drawing of two puppies tumbling in play. “These are two dogs Papa raised. They’re coonhounds but there’s not much for them to hunt these days. They spend most of their time sleeping under the porch.” She smiled. “That’s about all coonhounds do, sleep and hunt. And howl. You can hear these two from miles away when they pick up a scent. A good hunter can tell one dog’s voice from another and know just what they’re tracking.”

“I’ve done some hunting, but living in a city, I don’t own hounds.”

She studied him. “I can’t imagine living like that.”

“It’s not a bad life,” he said with a wry smile.

“I didn’t mean that. What do you do all day? I don’t see how you get the things you need. Surely you can’t afford to buy everything. Where do you get food?”

“From stores. We buy whatever we need.”

She shook her head. “Brother Grady would have a field day with that! He says it’s sinful not to work for everything you have and that you’re supposed to grow your own things. We try to be as self-reliant as we can be in the Hollow. There isn’t much we have to buy.” She smiled. “I guess that’s a good thing since the only thing we can’t seem to grow is money.”

Caleb didn’t comment.

“Are you hurting very bad now?”

“I’m better.”

“I could go get you some willow to chew. I’ve heard that helps with pain.”

He shook his head. “I’m all right.” He hesitated. “Megan, I wasn’t escaping from you. I have to try to get back to my unit. Otherwise, I’m a deserter.”

“I understand. I guess I would do the same thing.” She added, “Dinner will be ready soon. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

“You know your plan to trade me won’t work, don’t you?”

“I don’t know any such thing. It only stands to reason that they would want their own officer more than a private like Seth.”

“How do you intend to make this trade?”

“I don’t know yet,” she admitted.

“Crossing Union territory, even with a few Confederate sympathizers around, will be dangerous. Traveling with me as a prisoner and returning home safely will be nearly impossible. Even if we reach the right prison, there’s no guarantee that they’ll give you Seth. They might just keep me and send you away.”

Megan felt the tears rising and she fought them back. “I have to do something!”

“Because you love Seth that much?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. “No,” she said finally. “Because I don’t love him enough.” She left the room before he could ask any more questions.

Caleb lay there listening to her make supper and thought about what she had said. Certainly she was honest. She hadn’t been forced to tell him that. “If you don’t love him that much, why are you set on marrying him?” he called out.

“It’s not something you’d understand,” she called back.

“Explain it to me.”

She came slowly back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I was intended for Seth most of my life. I can’t explain it to someone who didn’t grow up in the Hollow. I guess it’s different elsewhere. You see, most of us are related in one way or another so we don’t have many to choose from. Seth and I are one of the few that aren’t kin and that are the right age to marry. His cousin, Patrick, married Bridget. Seth was to marry me.”

“So it’s an arranged mamage.”

“In a way. I care for Seth. Our lives fit together. Our families are friends and the family lands are side by side. After we marry, the land will all be one, for all intents and purposes, though our fathers will control it as long as they’re alive. Do you understand?”

“I’m beginning to.”

“If I don’t marry Seth, there’s no one else eligible. Not unless I want to settle for a widower and have to raise his children from a previous wife. There are two men I could marry who already have families, but both of them are Papa’s age and I don’t care for either of them. Since I don’t have a brother to look after me as I get older, I have to marry. It wouldn’t be right to expect Patrick to take me in since he has younger sisters of his own that may need to live with them.”

“You have a brother. Maybe your family will forgive him after the war is over.”

“Not Papa. He never changes his mind. Mama would take Owen back right now. He was her favorite. Owen and Papa never saw eye to eye on anything. He probably would have left the Hollow for another reason if it hadn’t been the war. Owen is too rebellious.” She smiled faintly. “He and I are alike. Bridget is more like Mama. Papa has always said that Bridget will be happy in life because she doesn’t ask for all that much.”

“And you?”

“He says I never will be. Maybe he’s right in the long run, but I’m happy now. I like my cabin and I even like not being with the others.” She looked at him. “Can you understand that?”

“I can understand it easily. From what you’ve told me, I wouldn’t want to be with them, either.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t see. I love them. Or at least I care for most of the people in the settlement. But I like my independence.”

“And after you’re married?”

For a long time Megan was silent. “I guess we all have to give up something. Sacrifice is supposed to be good for us.”

“I’ve never believed that. And I don’t think independence is a bad thing. It hasn’t hurt me any.”

“Of course not. You’re not a woman.”

“Why couldn’t a couple be independent together?”

“Now you’re talking nonsense.” She touched her drawing of the puppies. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh?”

“Yes.”

“I used to pretend that when I became an adult I would write a book and draw pictures to illustrate it.” She threw him a quick look. “Are you laughing at me?”

“No. I was smiling because I plan to write a book someday myself.”

Megan stared at him. “You want to write a book? Now I know you’re teasing me.”

“Why do you think I’m ridiculing you at every turn? I’ve had stories in my head ever since I was a boy. I used to tell stories to Felicity and her friends all the time.”

“Men don’t write. They build fences and repair barns and hunt for game.”

“Megan, the world is larger than Black Hollow. My father doesn’t do any of those things. Neither do any of my uncles. Who do you think writes books if they’re not written by men and women? Somebody does it and I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be me. Or you, for that matter.

“I can just see me now, writing stories between milking the cow and churning the butter and gathering the eggs. Maybe I could do the illustrations while I scrub the floor.”

“Suit yourself. Far be it from me to convince you to be free.”

She frowned at him. “The world isn’t so accommodating. I’m surprised you’ve grown this old and have not noticed that.”

“The world also isn’t full of nothing but work and responsibilities. If some of us don’t dream and work to fulfill our dreams, we aren’t any better than cattle.”

“Why is it that we end up arguing if we talk more than a few minutes? I’m going to see how supper is coming along.”

“Supper can wait.”

“You talk twice as much as any man I ever saw. I’ll bet Papa hasn’t talked to Mama this much in the past year!”

“Then I feel sorry for your mother.”

“Caleb, not everyone talks all day long. And what’s more, I don’t think your people are as idle as you say they are.”

“They aren’t idle at all. They just have different pursuits.”

She nodded knowingly. “Yes, well, I’m going to pursue supper now.” She left but she couldn’t stop thinking about all he had said.

Could she really write and illustrate a book? She had harbored this dream for so long it was a part of her. Yet when she thought of how to go about it, she reached a dead end. Nobody in Raintree was a book publisher—they didn’t even have a newspaper. How would she ever go about getting a book published, assuming it was good enough for others to want to read it? No, she told herself. Being a writer would just have to be a dream.

But would Caleb write? He seemed certain that he could do it. Did he know how to go about it? Whatever her own experience, Megan knew men and women wrote books because she had read their names on the covers. How did they have time? Perhaps once she had several children to help out with chores, there would be time, but she didn’t want to wait and she hadn’t seen her own mother’s work lessening over the years. Work seemed to expand to fill all the hours of the day no matter how many hands were whittling it down.

The idea of writing never left her all the time she prepared the meal. No matter how hard she tried to tell herself it was a foolish idea, it stuck in her mind.

When she took Caleb’s supper to him, he was lying very still. She knew him well enough by now to know this meant he was in pain. He didn’t mention it but sat up, and she handed him the plate. She admired him for that.

“Will you bring your plate in here and eat with me?”

“I suppose I could do that,” she conceded. She had never had a meal in her life that wasn’t consumed in the kitchen, but who was to know?

She joined him and noticed he had waited for her. “Mama baked the bread,” she said.

“She’s a good cook. So are you.”

Megan smiled. “Mama insisted that Bridget and I learn that even if we never learned anything else. She also taught us to sew.”

“And to read.”

“No, that was one of my aunts. Papa wasn’t too pleased that Bridget and I learned that. Owen was the one who was supposed to be learning to read.”

“Megan, why didn’t Seth write to you instead of to his parents? What’s the real reason?”

She pushed the food around on her plate. “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that all afternoon. He had to realize that I would know the letter came. I can understand him writing his parents instead of me the first time—maybe. But I can’t see a reason at all for him not even mentioning my name in the second letter.”

“Not even a greeting?”

She shook her head. She felt too close to tears to answer aloud.

“I know it doesn’t mean much to you, but I would have written to you.” His voice was softer than she had ever heard it.

Megan’s eyes met his and she found she couldn’t look away.

“I know it’s hard for you to believe, but all Northern men aren’t barbarians, just as all Southern ones aren’t knights in shining armor. I would be more thoughtful of my fiancée than that. Even if it was more or less an arranged marriage.”

She managed to avert her eyes. “Maybe I made a mistake in not letting those soldiers find you that day. Maybe I’m wrong in keeping you here.”

“I’m your pawn in this game of war,” he said with an attempt at lightness. “Remember?”

“I remember. All the same, it may have been a mistake. Maybe I should have let you go on down that road. A Yankee patrol might have found you.”

“Or I might have died of shock or exposure. I left the house thinking there was a regiment in the area. Like you said, I couldn’t hope to walk all the way to Raintree. But I had to try.”

“Did you hurt yourself too badly?” she asked.

He thought for a minute before he answered. “That’s possible. I know I’m hurting more than I was before I tried.”

“You’re a hard man to doctor,” she said.

“I know,” he replied.

“I want you to promise me you won’t try anything like that again.”

“I think I’d be a fool not to promise. I’ve had time to think lately. This is the most comfortable, even considering the pain in my leg, that I’ve been in months, maybe years. I think that’s why I thought I had to try to escape.”

“I don’t understand.” She didn’t dare look at him.

“Let’s just say I’m starting to enjoy the company. Perhaps a bit too much.”

She nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. “I guess I should have let you escape after all.” Suddenly she didn’t dare stay in the room with him and she left quickly. He didn’t call after her.

Sitting by the fire to finish her supper, Megan did quite a bit of soul-searching. She couldn’t start to care for Caleb, not even if he were a Confederate. She was promised to Seth, and in the Hollow, that was as binding as marriage vows. Certainly she could never love him or expect him to love her. But could she stop the emotion that was coming to life inside her? Certainly Seth had never made her feel this way, not even that night in the clearing.

Megan was glad no one could read her thoughts.

Chapter Five

From Caleb’s bed in the back room, he could see the fireplace in the main room. In the days he had been in the cabin, he had read most of The Mysteries of Udolpho, counted all the timbers in the walls, the wide planking flooring, and was starting to count the bricks in the fireplace. Megan fascinated him but she was busy most of the day, keeping the small farm and cabin in shape. Even though it was now winter, there were things to be mended and cloth to be sewn.

As he was counting the bricks for the second time, Megan came into his line of vision. She put down the armload of firewood and straightened as if her back were tired. Then she knelt and put a log on the fire and unhooked an iron spoon to stir the beans she was cooking over the fire.

He didn’t call out to her, nor did she look in his direction. Caleb rarely had the opportunity to observe her without her knowledge. Megan untied her heavy outdoor shawl and hung it on a peg by the chimney and touched her smooth auburn hair to be sure none of it had strayed from its pins. In spite of the work she had been doing, her white blouse was still clean and her skirt not muddy. Megan was one of the neatest women he had ever seen. She was nothing like the stereotypical mountain women some of his fellow soldiers had laughed about around campfires.

Since coming to the cabin, Caleb had discovered other discrepancies in what he had been told. It wasn’t difficult to figure out that the Union soldiers, in order to justify the hardships and dangers they were placing these women in, had to lessen their humanness. He assumed the Confederate soldiers were doing the same thing. For most people, war was only possible if one could convince himself that the enemy was barbaric.

Megan left his range of view but soon returned with a piece of paper. Still not looking in his direction, she sat on the low stool by the fire and began to draw. As her bit of charcoal moved over the paper, she started to sing.

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