Glory Read Free Page A

started down the aisle to exit the church. “Emma, Lucy, come along, come along. Julian, you must hurry! Kiss the lady, be done with it!” It was a final warning. Father Vickery fled, but still, Julian didn’t touch his bride.
    “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asked. She looked as if she were about to expire.
    “Well, one way or the other, it is done,” he said briefly. “But you’ll forgive me; I really can’t linger. Yet, I warn you. I pray to God you’ll have the sense to keep safe. I may be in enemy territory, but I do have ways to make sure that you don’t risk a child’s life the way you do your own.”
    He turned away from her. “Wait!” she cried.
    He turned back.
    “Stay, just a minute. ...” she whispered.
    He shook his head. “I can’t stay.”
    Quite suddenly, she threw herself at him. She came into his arms smelling seductively like roses. Her fingers twined into the hair at his nape, she came upon her toes, and found his lips. Her tongue teased for entry. Stunned, he found himself enfolding her to him, weeks of abstinence tearing into his system, and giving him a hunger for her that seemed to tear into his heart and mind. He kissed her passionately in return, holding her close, tasting her, savoring each second. ...
    Then vaguely, he became aware of the sounds beyond the church. She broke away from him at last.
    Her words were whispered with lips not an inch from his own, still damp from the passion of their kiss.
    “I’m sorry, Julian. But, you see, you would have died.”
    The passion? The trickery. He’d been right all along. He’d been the biggest fool in the world. She had lured him here, careful of the timing, keeping the Yankees away at first, knowing full well he would be watching for a trap. But now, they had arrived. Discreetly. Quietly. They were outside the church, ready to break in, to seize him should he become too enamored of his bride.
    He wore a Colt in a holster at his side, and at times, he wore a dress sword as well. Not tonight, and not that it mattered. He was a surgeon, a medical man, not a strategist, and not the usual Yankee prey. And many Yanks would just as soon die as face a Rebel surgeon. But many more were probably willing to bear his touch if it meant that their lives be spared, or if a limb might be saved.
    Bitterness swept through him. He wasn’t going to pull the Colt, kill the men sent to seize him, and go down in a blaze of glory himself. They’d shoot him down from the front door. And he intended to live. Besides, there might be a chance to escape later without being shot down, if he kept his wits about him.
    He pulled away from her, staring into her eyes. The truth was there. Every bit of it. She had planned this, so that he might be captured. She had thrown the kiss in at the last minute so that he would not leave too quickly. “You bitch!” he accused her softly.
    “I said I was sorry!”
    He caught her about the waist once again, jaw taut, ice seeming to fill his veins. He held her with such a force that she was crushed against him, her back arched, her chin high. “Dear wife,” he promised her, “trust me, I will see to it that you are very, very sorry, indeed.”
    She shook her head, angry now at the way he held her—and that she hadn’t the power to escape his arms. “You persist in being a foolish Rebel. I’m not your wife, and you will not make me sorry! That priest was no more real than my story.”
    So it had all been a ruse. But she was mistaken.
    He laughed softly. “I beg to differ, my dear. That was Father Vickery, out of Atlanta, devoted to his Georgian boys. Georgians, being Florida neighbors, try to help us out and the good Father Vickery just happened to be the closest clergy when I was getting ready to ride out. You may not be expecting my child. But I’m afraid that you are my wife.”
    Disbelief touched her eyes.
    The door to the church burst open. “Captain McKenzie! Julian!”
    He knew the voice, and he