Glory Read online

  Glory

  The Old Florida Series

  Heather Graham

  To Leland Burbank and Leslie Metcalf, two of my favorite people, with lots of love and best wishes on their engagement. Cheers! A lifetime of happiness to two wonderful people.

  And to some of the folks at Penguin Putnam.

  First, to my editor, Audrey LaFehr. Thanks for being supportive and critical, demanding and giving, all the things an editor should be—and thanks especially for pointing out my mistakes, frailties, and weaknesses—yet always having the faith to let me rework my own manuscripts.

  To Marianne Patala—thanks for always being there, and for so many things.

  To Genny Ostertag for all the little details.

  And to Louise Burke, publisher, thanks for all the incredible support, honesty, and encouragement.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Florida Chronology

  A Biography of Heather Graham

  Prologue

  DREAMS ...

  She knew that she was apart from the battle, she knew that she dreamed. What haunted her was that she had dreamed the dream before, that it had come, and it had gone, and it was coming again.

  She was apart from the battle, and yet she could see the carnage, breathe the black powder on the air, hear the cries of the men. She saw it all as if she stood on a distant hill. She could feel the heat beating down upon her, the slightest brush of a breeze lifting her hair. She could see the battlefield so clearly.

  Once, there had been cornfields. Great sheaves of green and gold, bending and bowing to a summer’s day. Now those sheaves were shorn, stripped down by gunfire as men fought, struggled, bled and died. Brothers, neighbors, fathers, sons, honoring the same God; speaking the same language. Blue and Gray mingled in death; no color remained for the fallen except for the black of eternity.

  She wanted to call to the men, to stop them from dying, and yet she could not.

  She saw a long dirt road where troops struggled to hold a line. Upon a hill stood a tiny church. Men were coming forward to defend it. An officer wearing a captain’s insignia was leading them. His blond hair was streaked with mud and sweat. He called out, his voice strong and powerful, beckoning, as he marched out first into the field of battle. Bullets flew; the men sought the cover of a farmer’s stone wall. The captain, his back still to her, managed to take his troops into the field, despite the hail of bullets. The air was so thick with black powder that she could not see his face at first, even when he turned, looking back to a man who had fallen. An injured man, calling to him.

  She knew the captain, even if she denied in her heart that it could be him. She felt the pain all over again.

  She heard him shout to the others. And then he went back.

  She tried to cry out; she tried to stop him. And for a moment, the briefest moment, he gave pause. As if he heard her, distantly, somewhere in his heart. Yet, it didn’t matter. If he had known that death was a certainty, it wouldn’t have mattered. All of his life, he had learned to live one way. Courage and compassion were virtues under God; he could not leave an injured man to die. There was no life without honor and mercy.

  Ducking low, he hurried back across the field of battle, closer, closer, closer still to the injured man.

  Then the bullet struck him. Dead on, at the back of the neck, near the base of the skull. Perhaps it was merciful.

  It was a mortal hit.

  For a moment, he was frozen in time, life caught within his eyes. Regret, pain, the things that he would never see, never touch again.

  He mouthed her name. He saw the sky, the crimson, setting sun. The field, the bodies merging in his fading vision with the earth. What he saw was green and sweet and good, and what he smelled was the redolence of the earth, the summer’s harvest. ...

  He fell forward. And the light within his eyes, like the light of that day, was gone. Forever gone ...

  She struggled to awaken. She had dreamed this dream before; she had lived the reality and the pain of it, and in her sleep she fought it, wondering why it should come to haunt her and again when it was past. But as life faded from his eyes, so light faded from the sky. Then it came back brightly; the dream began anew.

  She stood on a different hill. And watched different men.

  They marched in great, sweeping waves. Again, the field was alive with smoke, with powder, with the thunder of cannon and shot. A cry could be heard on the air, a challenging cry, a sound of pride and determination and a defiance of death. A Rebel yell. Despite it, she thought, the South was dying here.

  She was confused, aware a new dream mingled with the old. She saw Richard, her husband. Again, he was dying ... but then he rolled, and turned, and it wasn’t Richard anymore.

  This soldier’s hair was dark. He lay upon the ground, unhorsed by cannon fire, thrown far from his mount. Then he rose, calling out to those who had followed him, ordering help for the dead and dying men. He ducked the black hail and dirt rain of the explosions still coming, raced through the barrage of fire all around him. He tied a tourniquet on one man, ordered another dragged back—announced another dead. There were so many injured!

  He was too close to the battle lines, and suddenly bullets were flying as well. The clash of steel could be heard as the foot soldiers who had survived the barrage as they charged the enemy lines met in hand-to-hand combat with the defenders.

  And that’s when he was hit. ...

  She saw it, as she had seen it before. Saw the bullet strike, saw the look in his eyes. His own mortality registered instantly, for he was a physician, and he knew, and he started to fall. ...

  The field was suddenly alight with a burst of color against the black powder of cannon and rifle fire. Streaks of sunlight, gold and hazy, mauve, crimson, color like that of a setting sun, a dying day ... life perhaps, was like a day, sunset bursting like a last glory, fading to black. ...

  She awoke with a start. The sun was no longer setting upon rolling hills and fields bathed in blood. It was just rising in the eastern sky, yet its gentle morning streaks touched the white sheets of her camp bed, nightdress, and canvas tent with a haunting shade of palest red. ...

  Like an echo of blood.

  She had dreamed death once before, and it had happened. Richard had died. Death would come again. If she didn’t stop it.

  How? How could she stop this great, deadly tide of war? She couldn’t, she couldn’t, she didn’t have the power. ...

  She had to stop his death. Perhaps she could warn him. Stop him. Julian? With his pride, loyalty, determination—pigheadedness? She had to! She could not bear this agony again.

  She rose quickly, washed, dressed, and emerged from her tent in the medical sector of the Yankee camp. Corporal Watkins, the orderly standing guard duty, was just pouring coffee. “Why, Miz Rhiannon, you’re up way too early. It will still be several hours before the firing commences again, I’ll wager.” He handed her the coffee he had poured, shaking his head. “This must be mighty hard for you, and other folk, I imagine. I mean, to some Northern boys, the only good Reb is a dead Reb, but then you folks from the South who were against secession, why you know they’re some good folks in Rebel
butternut and gray. And cannonballs, ma’am, they just don’t know the difference between a good man and a bad, now, do they?”

  She took the coffee he had offered her. Her fingers were shaking. “I have to see General Magee, Corporal Watkins.”

  “Why, he’ll be busy, ma’am, planning strategy—”

  “Now, Corporal. Tell him I have to see him. And he’ll see me. I know that he will.”

  Yes, General Magee believed in her, he would see her. What then? Once she’d baited, tricked, and betrayed Julian McKenzie?

  He’d loathe her. But he’d be alive to do so. And one day perhaps, far in the future, a child would have a father.

  Julian had been lying awake a long time.

  He hadn’t gone to bed until he’d been ready to drop. There were so many injured. And still, so early, he’d awakened. Morning was still in the future, yet the very first rays of dawn were just beginning to touch the heavens. Awake, he’d come to sit out in the open, aware that he had to rest, if not sleep, before entering into surgery again. He was glad of the night’s touch of coolness against the summer’s heat. The air was clean tonight, good, sweet. He needed its freshness. War was indeed terrible. He could not operate fast enough, he could not heal, he could not cure, he could only cut and saw, move as quickly as his limbs would manage. He dared not feel, not think, not wonder, nor worry. ...

  Yet he could not help but worry, and think about Rhiannon in his few precious moments of peace. Damn her, but he could not forget her. From the moment he had first seen her, standing upon the stairway, she had somehow slipped beneath his skin, and into his soul. Ah, but he was the enemy. She was a witch. Haughty, stubborn, far too proud, ridiculously argumentative. And yet ...

  God, how he wished she were with him.

  No one had such a touch. She was magic. She healed. She haunted. And he was afraid, because she was with the Yanks now, as she wanted to be. Not in relative safety where he’d sent her, but near, perhaps, on this battlefield, eager to save the lives of her own countrymen.

  “Captain! Captain McKenzie!”

  Startled by the urgent call, he pushed away from the tree he leaned against and rose quickly. Dabney Crane, one of the civilian scouts, rode toward him, dismounting quickly.

  “What is it, Dabney?” he asked, frowning.

  “A message from the Yankee lines, sir. I was approached by one of their riders.”

  By day, battle raged. But when the fighting fell silent for the night, messages often passed between the lines. No one stopped them; every man was aware that the time might come when their own kin tried to reach them, and far too often, for one last time.

  “My brother—” Julian began, a terrible lump in his throat. Was Ian across the lines? He never knew where his brother might be.

  “No, sir, there’s no bad news about your Yankee soldier kin. This has to do with a lady.”

  “My sister, my cousin—”

  “No, sir, a different lady. A Mrs. Tremaine. She’s serving with their medical corps, sir. The rider, a man I’ve met with now and then regarding other personal exchanges between troops, gave me an envelope, and I was given strict instructions that I was to give it to you, and no one else, and that I keep this all in strictest confidence. But I’m to summon you, now, quick, before the day’s fighting can commence. She has to see you, sir, at the old Episcopal church down the pike.”

  “She has to see me?” he inquired, his stomach tightening. She had some warning for him. Or some trick. He started to hand the envelope back, unopened. “Tell her I can’t come,” he told Dabney.

  “She says the matter is urgent, you must come, sir.”

  “Why would this lady think I would be willing to see her, now, when I am so sorely needed elsewhere?”

  “Sir, I can’t say. Perhaps you should open the envelope.”

  He didn’t want to do so. He gritted his teeth, looking down at the cream parchment. He opened the envelope, and read the words.

  “Captain McKenzie, I know how unwilling you must be to answer any missive of mine, but I must see you. I am relying upon the fact that you were raised a gentleman, and as such, with death on every horizon, you would not leave me to lead a life of shame, nor cast an innocent into the ignominy of a tainted future. Therefore, sir, I beg of you, meet me. There is a small Episcopal church down on the pike. I’ll not keep you from your war long.”

  Dabney Crane didn’t say anything. He studied Julian with intense curiosity.

  Julian stared back at Dabney, determined to betray nothing but disinterest. Yet his heart was suddenly hammering with a fierce beat as he wondered just what was truth here. Had she finally ceased to deny what had come between them?

  “Captain?” Dabney said anxiously.

  “I can spare but a few minutes. Men are dying.”

  Dabney shook his head sadly. “That they are, sir. I can’t begin to imagine those who will awaken this morning to die by nightfall. But I do suggest, sir, that if you have a mind to see this lady at all, you take your few spare minutes now. Colonel Joe Clinton from Georgia had agreed to meet his nephew, Captain Zach Clinton of Maine, at the river last night. Captain Zach showed, but Colonel Joe had been killed.”

  Every muscle within him seemed to tighten. What if he refused to meet her, and he died? And what if she were expecting his child, would she raise it with another man’s heritage, another man’s name?

  Pride, he taunted himself. What it could do to a man was terrible.

  “Sir?”

  “I need my horse—”

  “Take old Ben, sir. He’s a healthy mount, and as fast as the wind. You must go now. Before the troops begin to waken.”

  And before it’s determined I’m a deserter, he thought wryly.

  “Sir,” Dabney reminded him, “time is of the essence.”

  Julian hesitated. He didn’t trust Rhiannon. But if it was a trick, he decided grimly, no matter—she was going to get what she had asked for. “I’m going immediately,” he told Dabney. “Go quickly now and waken Father Vickery. Send him behind me, quickly.”

  “Yessir.” Dabney smiled, delighted that he seemed to have brought off an intimate liaison.

  Julian accepted Dabney Crane’s offer of the use of his horse. Riding past Rebel pickets, he identified himself, and crossed the Rebel line into the no-man’s-land between the Rebs and the Yanks. Approaching the church, he slowed his mount, and waited on a ridge where the trees still stood, remnants of a small forest all but destroyed by cannon fire. He watched, carefully surveying the area.

  The church itself was on a spit of open ground, with much of the foliage and many of the fields around it mown down by the fighting. If there were Yanks surrounding the church, he should have seen them. Dismounting from his horse by the trees, he watched cautiously a moment longer, then hunched low to the ground, inching his way across the open expanse before the small church. Reaching the doorway, he pressed it partially open, and slipped inside.

  She was there. She stood before the altar, her back to him, her head bowed. She still wore black. Black was the color typically worn for a full year of mourning—and God knew, she mourned her Richard! But for her wedding to another man? Yet, even if she was sincere in this endeavor, it still meant nothing more than words and respectability to her. She wore black inside, around her heart, and he hadn’t the power to lighten that shade.

  Still, it appeared that she had come alone. He took his time, watching, waiting, wary of her. Wanting to appear casual, he leaned back comfortably against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest.

  “You summoned me?” he said quietly at last, and she spun around, startled, alarmed, her hand flying to her throat.

  For a moment, just for a moment, in the soft, flickering candlelight of the small church, he thought he saw a flash of emotion in the depths of her bewitching green eyes. Then she regained control, hiding whatever feelings had plagued her.

  “You’ve come!” she said.

  He shrugged, keeping his distance from her
. It was amazing, but nothing seemed to mar her. Her mourning clothing was simple, as befitted her work in the Union field hospitals. She was slim, worn, weary, and still regal, stately, and very beautiful. Her hair was neatly pulled back, netted into a bun at her nape, yet its rich darkness seemed to shimmer blue-black with the slightest touch of the candlelight. Her throat was long and elegant; her fingers cast against it were the same.

  “I repeat, you’ve summoned me.”

  She nodded, looking down then. “I didn’t hear you come,” she murmured. “Have you been there long?”

  “Long enough. Are you communing with God? Or with Richard?”

  She raised her head; her eyes caught his. There was fire within them at his caustic tone. “This is extremely awkward for me,” she told him, her voice sincerely pained.

  “I can imagine. You have gone from thinking you could convince me that nothing had happened to demanding that I do the gentlemanly thing.”

  “I believe ... that it’s necessary!” she whispered.

  “And Richard has been dead just a little too long?”

  “How dare you mock him!”

  “I’m not mocking the dead, Rhiannon, just calculating the facts.”

  “How rude!”

  “This is war, Rhiannon. I’m afraid some of the niceties of life have slipped away. You summoned me because you want something out of me. So please, talk to me.”

  “What do you want out of me?” she demanded fiercely.

  “Well, an admission that something happened.”

  She gritted her teeth and her eyes touched his with a glitter of anger. “Oh, my God, don’t you understand? I didn’t want anything to happen, I still can’t believe that I ... that I ...”

  “Mistook a flesh-and-blood man for Richard’s ghost.”

  They still stood the length of the aisle apart. He thought that she would have slapped him had they not. Perhaps he deserved it. It was simply hard to have been used as a substitute, then summoned as a social convenience. But if there was a child ...

  He waved a hand in the air. “Never mind. As you pointed out in your letter, it’s a deadly war. I want my child born with my name—it is my child, right? You haven’t been seducing other men in the midst of drug-induced illusions, have you?”