And One Rode West Read Free

fully upon her at last. She heard him whisper something, but she didn’t know what. She drifted, aching, trembling, spent, delicious, still throbbing.
    Seconds later, she was aware of the sudden, steel-hard constriction of his body. A long, harsh groan escapedhim, and he shuddered, coming within her again and again. And more gently, just once again.
    He held her, then sighed. He eased his weight from her and scooped her into his arms. He held her, stroking her hair.
    I love you!
    The words were there again.
    But she couldn’t say them. He had brought her to the plains of heaven. But that was only an illusion. The tepee was real. The fire was real. The threat of death was real.
    She started to speak.
    “Sh!” he said softly. “We have the night.”
    The night. They had the night.
    Perhaps no future. Only a past.
    Sometimes it seemed the past they shared had begun forever ago.
    Sometimes it seemed as if it had been just moments ago when he had come to her, galloping up upon his horse.
    An unwilling cavalier. One who wore the wrong color.
    And one with whom she had made a devil’s bargain.
    It had been forever ago …
    No, it had been just a few months ago, with a lifetime of living in those months.
    The war had ended at the beginning of summer.
    And their private battle had begun.

One
  A Conquered Nation
June 1865

Cameron Hall

Tidewater, Virginia
    The day was so hot that the sun seemed to shimmer above the ground, making the fields and the land weave in a distorted manner. The humidity was as high as the day was hot.
    Christa Cameron suddenly stood straight, bone-tired from the heat. She arched her sore back and dropped the small spade she had been using to loosen the dirt by the tomato plants. She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them.
    If she looked to the river, it was as if the past years had never been. The river flowed on just the same as it always had. The sun shimmered above it, too, and the water seemed blue and black. At this distance, it seemed to be standing still. Pa had always said that summer in Virginia could be like summer in hell. Hotter than it was even down in Georgia or Florida, or way out west in California. The river might make it a spell cooler by night, but by day it didn’t seem to help at all. Still, the heat was something she knew wellenough. She’d lived with it all her life. The house had been built to catch every little breeze that might go by.
    Turning around, Christa stared up at it. While the river gave away nothing of the tempest of the past four years, the house told it all. Peeling, cracking paint, loose boards, that one step from the back porch still missing. There were a few bullet holes in it from the day that the war had come right to them. Staring at the house, she felt ill. For a moment, she was dizzy. Then her anger and bitterness came sweeping down on her and her fingers trembled.
    She should have been grateful that the house was still standing. So many other fine homes had been burned right to the ground. In so many places lone chimneys could be seen, rising up like haunting wraiths from the scorched earth around them. Her house still stood. Cameron Hall. The first bricks had been laid in the sixteen hundreds. The building was a grand lady if ever there had been one. Down its middle ran a huge central hall with broad double doors on the front and rear porch, all of which could be opened to welcome the breezes, to allow a host of beautifully dressed men and women to party and dance out to the moonlit lawn if they so desired.
    Even the lawn was ravaged now.
    The house still stood! That mattered more than anything. The graceful columns that rose so majestically from the porches might need another coat of paint, but they stood. No fire had scorched them, no cannon had leveled them.
    And though the paint was chipping and three-fourths of the fields were lying fallow, her home still stood and still functioned because of her.
    The Yanks had been ordered to leave