Great jumping catfish, what in the—
A woman screamed.
He yanked on his pants, jammed his feet into his boots and began to run. In the dark he could barely see the trail. Keeping low to the ground, he headed in the general direction of the noise.
Moonlight, he thought as he stumbled past the cookhouse, was one of God’s greatest ideas!
Chapter Four
All the way up the hill, Tom could hear the sound of a woman crying. It cut into his belly like a shot of rotgut whiskey and made him blind with rage. He didn’t know why, but he’d never been able to stomach a woman’s tears.
When he could see the dark outline of the cabin in the moonlight, he slowed to a walk. If she could cry, she could breathe. That answered one question.
The other question—Why?—he answered when he stumbled over the carcass of a deer.
Someone had killed tomorrow’s supper. The shot must have scared the ginger out of her, but the thought of venison steaks made him smile. He stepped around the dead animal and headed for the glimmer of white on the porch ahead of him.
“Miss Hampton? It’s Tom Randall.”
When he stepped forward, she jerked upright. “Oh! Please come no farther, C-Colonel Randall. I am not p-properly attired.” She sounded like she had the hiccups.
Tom spun on one heel so his back was to her. “Who shot the deer?”
“I—I did,” she confessed between sobs. “At least I think I did. I had my eyes closed.”
Tom knelt to inspect the animal. “Mighty good shot, ma’am. Clean and true, right into the head.”
“Oh, the poor, dear thing. I meant only to scare it away, not kill it!”
Poor dear thing? He sneaked a look at her. Arms locked about her white-shrouded legs, she rocked back and forth, her forehead pressed against her knees.
“I feel just awful about shooting it. It had such big, soft eyes.”
Two things warred for Tom’s attention—the revolver lying beside her and her hair tumbling loose about her shoulders. He struggled to keep his mind on the gun.
“Where’d you learn to shoot?”
She choked back a sob. “My father taught me, before he went off to his military post. He said I had a g-good eye.”
“And a steady hand, it would appear. Miss Hampton, you might as well dry your tears and make the best of it. The boys’ll be grateful to you for supplying some good meat.”
“I—I will try.” She gazed at him with a stricken look. “I just feel so…mean!”
He stuffed down a chuckle. “You ever shoot anything before?”
She nodded. “I shot a Yankee once. In the backyard of the parsonage. He was after our last two chickens, you see, and I…I hit him in the shoulder. I offered to dress the wound, but he swore something dreadful and skedaddled over the back fence.”
So she’d lived in a parsonage, had she? A preacher’s daughter with good eyesight and guts. Now, why should that surprise him? All Southerners were murdering bastards hiding under a cloak of gentility. He’d learned that in Richmond. His jaw tightened.
“I hear somebody coming, Miss Hampton. You might want to put on a robe.”
Meggy scrambled to her feet. The colonel stood before her, both hands jammed in his trouser pockets. Mercy me, he wore no shirt!
She stared at the bare skin of his chest, at the muscles cording his broad shoulders. Never in her whole life had she seen a man without his shirt, not even Papa. She gulped. Even her intended, Mr. Peabody, had been laid out in his coffin fully dressed.
An odd, restless feeling crept over her as she gazed at the colonel’s tall frame. Why, he looked strong enough to—
Sergeant O’Malley crashed out of the trees and into the clearing. “For the love of God, Tom, what’s goin’ on? I heard a shot, and when I found your tent empty…well, I thought maybe you’d—What’s this, now?”
The Irishman stared down at the dead stag. “Well, I’ll be smithereened! You killed us a deer, Tom.”
“I didn’t exactly…”
Meggy slipped inside the front door and listened to Tom’s voice floating from the porch. “Think we can dress it out here?”
“Nah. Too dark. Let’s lug it down to the cookhouse. I’ll go rustle up Fong and some other help. Maybe those two rascally Claymore lads you took on.”
She held her breath. Tom had sidestepped telling Mr. O’Malley who had killed the animal. True, she didn’t want to confess the deed, but she doubted the colonel would understand why. No Yankee soldier could fathom Southern sensibilities.
She tiptoed to the counter and rummaged in the pile of garments for her night robe, drew it on over her shimmy and underdrawers and tied it about her waist with a jerk.
No Federal officer she’d ever encountered paid the slightest attention to the feelings of civilians. When the Northern army overran Chester County, the soldiers had swaggered and shouted and stolen her mother’s ruby ear-bobs. Why, they did not even look like gentlemen. Even the men she and her sisters had tended in hospital were hopelessly ill-mannered and unlettered.
Through the open doorway she watched the two men drag the deer away from her porch. Then Mr. O’Malley tramped off down the hill toward the cookhouse and the colonel settled himself on the planks, his back toward her.
A long minute dragged by. Meggy became acutely aware of the noises around her, the breeze sighing through the treetops, the low hoo…hoo of an owl. The uneven breathing of the man sitting not three feet away from her.
What was he thinking?
The silence hung on until she thought she would scream. All of a sudden his low voice made her jump.
“Might as well go on back to bed, Miss Hampton. We’ll haul the carcass down to the cookhouse so you won’t have to look at it in the morning.”
“Thank you,” she managed, in a tight voice. But she stood frozen to the spot. Why could she not move?
Because…Meggy’s entire body trembled. Was the sight of a half-naked man outside her front door so disturbing?
Certainly not! It was because she was a tiny bit afraid of him.
Because she disliked him.
Because he, well, he was a Yankee.
Because he was a man.
Her heart hammered. Most definitely not! She put no stock whatsoever in such things. She and Walter Peabody had contracted a union of souls, not bodies. She always wondered at her sisters, who had grown dreamy-eyed and absentminded when they were smitten by some young gentleman. Oh, Meggy, just the sound of his voice gives me the shivers!
She had no time for such sentimental nonsense.
Besides that, she most certainly harbored no such feelings about a man she had known just half a day and was a Yankee besides.
She was tired, that was it. And overwrought. Her nerves were frazzled. This entire day—and night—was a dreadful nightmare, and any moment she would wake up.
“Go to bed,” he repeated.
“I would,” she murmured, “if I could make my feet move.”
He rose and half turned in her direction. “Are you all right?”
“No. I—I mean, yes. Of course.”
He stepped up onto the porch. “Need help?”
His movement toward