Lydia. Elizabeth Lane
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her go before you make a fool of yourself. But it was easier said than done. Donovan stared into Sarah’s face, battling long-buried urges that were too powerful to resist.
She cleared her throat nervously. “You won’t have to worry about taking care of the baby. Annie knows enough to—”
Her words ended in a gasp as Donovan lifted the spectacles from her nose and let them drop to her breast.
Sarah twisted wildly away, averting her face as if she were disfigured. What was wrong with the woman? Donovan wondered. Why was she so afraid of having a man look at her? Didn’t Sarah Parker know how pretty she was? Didn’t she realize what a beauty she would be without those oldmaid lenses and that skinned-back hair?
Somebody ought to tell her, he thought. Hell, somebody ought to show her.
Driven by some demon he could neither understand nor control, he gripped her arm harder, forcing her back toward him. “Let me look at you, Sarah,” he rasped. “Let me see you as you were meant to be seen!”
“Let me go!” She was struggling now, in obvious panic. A gentleman would do as she demanded, Donovan reminded himself. But he’d left off being a gentleman somewhere between Camp Douglas and Kiowa County. Besides, the situation had already gone beyond propriety. Whatever it took, he vowed, he would see it through.
Catching her jaw with his hand, he wrenched her face upward. “Blast it, I’m not going to hurt you,” he muttered. “Just hold still and trust me!”
Her only reply was a sharp kick in the shins. Clenching his teeth, Donovan held on to her. His fingers found the coiled knot of her hair and began to fumble with the pins. His pulse leapt as the silken cascade tumbled loose over his hand.
“Donovan! No!”
With a sharp cry, she wrenched herself away from him. Her own momentum flung her against the kindling pile. She stumbled over her skirt, then caught her balance and whirled back to face him, half-crouched, like a catamount at bay.
Donovan, she had called him. Back in the cabin, Sarah Parker had addressed him as Mr. Cole.
Bewildered, Donovan backed away a step. “Now listen,” he began, “I didn’t mean to—”
He broke off at the full sight of her face—the tousled curls framing high, elegant cheekbones, the stormy eyes, the wide, sensual mouth. And suddenly the face had a name—a name that blazed like hellfire across Donovan’s mind.
Lydia.
He stared at her, too dumbfounded to speak. This was impossible, he told himself. Lydia Taggart was dead. Her own Negro servants had shown him her grave when he’d come back to give her Virgil’s ring. They’d told him how a mortar shell had struck the house during Grant’s assault on Richmond, exploding in her bedroom. He had placed the thin, gold circlet on her headstone and walked away.
Lydia.
A sense of betrayal stole over him, replacing disbelief and darkening his emotions. Whatever was going on here, he swore, he would get to the bottom of it if it took all night.
Fist clenched, he took a step toward her. “Lady,” he growled, “you’ve got some tall explaining to do!”
But even as he spoke, she darted up with a little cry and sprinted for the shed. Donovan heard the mule snort as she flung herself onto its back. Numb with shock, he watched her come flying outside, wheel her mount and disappear like a phantom into the snowy blackness of night.
For a long moment he stared after her, snowflakes clustering on his unshaven cheeks. Then, with the sound of hoofbeats ringing down the gulch, he forced himself to stir. Like a sleepwalker, he turned and walked slowly back toward the cabin. His footsteps, crunching snow, echoed the rhythm of his thoughts.
Lydia. Lydia Taggart. Alive. And a Yankee.
Sarah unsaddled her mule and left it munching hay in Amos Satterlee’s barn behind the store. Calmly, as if the whole town might be watching, she mounted the snowswept back stairs to her rooms, twisted the key in the lock and stepped inside.
Only when the door was securely bolted behind her did she surrender to panic. Her pulse, which she’d kept under control by sheer force of will, exploded into a ripping gallop. Beads of sweat broke out on her ash-pale forehead. She sagged against the wall, her knees too weak to support her weight.
She should have known it would happen—that sooner or later, even here, someone would recognize her. Most of the Southerners in Miner’s Gulch, including the Suttons, had arrived before the war, in the ‘59 gold rush. Sarah had felt relatively safe among them. Then, just last week, she’d stopped by the Sutton cabin to check on Varina and had run smack into big Donovan Cole. Only then had she realized, to her horror, that Varina was Donovan and Virgil’s sister.
She would never have gone back to the cabin if Varina had not needed her so desperately. But how could she have ignored little Annie’s pleas, or her own awareness that Varina might die without skilled help? She had placed Christian duty above her own safety. Now she would have to deal with the consequences.
Sarah sank onto one of the split-log benches that she used in her makeshift classroom. By now, she realized, Donovan would have figured out everything. Even back in Richmond, where he and Virgil had frequented the parties she gave, he had seemed distant and untrusting. Now—yes, he would know. And what he didn’t know, he would guess. Donovan was no fool.
But would he understand? No, of course not. She could not expect any Southerner, least of all Donovan, to grasp the motives behind what she had done during the war.
And even if he did understand, she could never expect him to forgive her. Not Donovan Cole.
Sarah pressed shaking hands to her ice-cold face. Dear heaven, what had happened tonight? Why had Donovan been so insistent on getting close to her? Why had she let him? There’d been nothing between the two of them in Richmond. It was Virgil who had courted her. Sweet, eager Captain Virgil Cole, who’d held back nothing from her—including Robert E. Lee’s plan to push north into Pennsylvania.
She’d learned later that Virgil had died at Antietam, and that Donovan had been taken prisoner. For that, and other uncounted tragedies, she would never escape her own blame. The servants who’d acted as her couriers had relayed Lee’s strategy to the North. The resulting alarm had galvanized Union forces, triggering the bloodiest day of the entire war.
Sarah had only done her duty. But that knowledge did little to ease the nightmares that racked her sleep.
Wild with agitation, she sprang to her feet and raced into the bedroom. Her battered leather portmanteau lay under the secondhand brass bed. She wrenched it out and, slapping off the dust, flung it open on the patchwork coverlet. Her quivering hands fumbled in dresser drawers, jerking out underclothes, toiletries, small treasures-Stop!
Sarah forced herself to stand perfectly still and take deep, measured breaths. Running wasn’t the answer, she reminded herself. She’d done it once before, three years ago in Missouri, when someone recognized her on the street. Now it had happened again. The odds were, it would happen almost anywhere she took refuge.
And Sarah had reason to stay. Miner’s Gulch had become her home. She’d made friends here. She’d delivered sixteen—no, seventeen—babies, nursed the town through measles and scarlet fever epidemics, and taught nearly a score of children to read and cipher. To leave now, with so much more to be doneNo, she could not even think of it. It was time to face up to the past. It was time to take a stand.
Against Donovan Cole.
She sank onto the bed, cheeks flaming anew at the memory of Donovan’s nearness—his iron-hard grip on her shoulders, his fingers loosening her hair, tangling roughly in its falling