Surrender the Wind (32 page)

“She has the poise and loveliness of a queen, but the heart of a saint. You are a lucky man to have such a woman,” Dr. Parks said. “I would not be a doctor if not for the Fitzgerald’s. I was an orphan with no money, but with plenty of talent and inclination for healing. Father Callahan cultivated my desire, and went to Mr. Fitzgerald, Catherine’s father, asking him to finance my education. I owe the Fitzgerald’s a great debt.”

John poured more wine. “So you know Father Callahan?”

“Like a real father he was to me, a very good priest and quite pious. But boy can he work himself into a rage faster than a muddled up nest of hornets.” Dr. Parks chuckled from his reflections.

“Must run in the family,” John muttered.

“I left Mac Dougall Hospital feeling I’d be able to save more men by working on the front where injuries occurred. We were overrun by Colonel Mosby’s men and deposited in your husband’s camp.

John tilted back his chair. “I am in bad need of a doctor for my men. What do you suggest I do about it, Doctor Parks?”

“I do not know, General Rourke. As far as I know, I will be shipped to Andersonville.”

“As a prisoner of war, you are under my command. As the general of this division, I command you to stay behind to be our Chief Surgeon.”

Catherine threw down her napkin. “You have the diplomatic subtlety of cannon.”

“I don’t need to be a diplomat. I’m a general. I command diplomacy.”

Before she began her tirade, Doctor Parks waylaid her. “Your husband is being very noble, Catherine. He knows that I have a sworn oath to the government of the United States. I believe he also knows that my sworn Hippocratic Oath as a physician comes first and foremost. I really do not care where I practice my skills. North or South makes no difference to me. I go wherever I am needed. Your husband is very generous in keeping me from facing the Confederate death pit of Andersonville. By commanding me as a prisoner of war, he also absolves me from going against my oath to the Union.” Dr. Parks smiled at him. “Thank you and I accept. I hope your men will not mind a Yankee doctor attending them.”

“I’m sure they will be most happy.” John lifted his glass of wine and toasted Doctor Parks. “There is decency in men and goodness. I must never forget that.”

“Thank you, again,” said Dr. Parks. “The war is a changing paradox for me too.”

“It is for us all.” John said, and he knew Catherine felt his words were spoken about their connection. “In war, everything is simple. But the simple is difficult.” John rose from the table. “It’s late. I’ll escort you to your new quarters. Perhaps you could look in on a few patients before you retire.”

“Of course, I’d be most happy too.” Dr. Park’s turned to Catherine and bowed slightly. “It was a pleasure seeing you again.”

With a smile on his face, John walked Dr. Parks to the hospital, walking over newly fallen acorns, observing his men over their cook fires, joyous with new rations from Colonel Mosby. He stepped over a fallen log, where pearl-like fungi, rioted its length, opalescent in the moonlight, like mussels on an ocean rock. Nothing could put him in a bad mood.

When John left, Catherine could barely move, her body numb. Even her mind seemed static. She remembered the way John had touched her this afternoon, the way her body burned with longing. There was no denying that he had been affected as much as she. That deep down, he still loved her.

She pulled off her gown, chemise, corset and petticoat, folded the garments and placed them in the trunk. She slipped on her nightgown, pulled the pins from her hair, picked up a brush and glided the bristles through her tresses.

Oh yes, John was in layers, had built an impenetrable fortress. She had seen flickering emotions cross his face during dinner when Dr. Parks had sung her praises. His emotions held more a power over him than sword or poison. He was dying behind his wall, in sullen, taciturn silence, letting a horde of Trojan horses possessing hidden emotional poisons to circumvent the walls of rationalization.

Given a chance, she would pull down those walls and kill the Trojan horses. She could help him. She must draw him into her light and free the man behind the glacial steel-blue eyes.

She would confront him.

She dropped her brush on the bed in a thud. Alarm bells rang in her head, warning her of the danger. Like a deadly wind, her needs, her emotions threatened to drag her away where she would not know how to find a way back. It was a road she should not travel. Yet, however loud the warning bells rang around her, she would not adhere to them.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and sighed.

It was too late. Despite all that had happened to make her hate him, she was still in love with John Rourke.

* * *

He threw open the tent flap, letting it fall on his backside. Catherine sat on the bed, her feet tucked under her. Did her unnatural silence trouble him? He paused, hanging his hat.

“I used to think there was a future for us, John, but the bridge that would build our life together is too far to cross. I must find a place to nurture life and hope again, to heal from this insanity. But give me the courtesy of answering one question. Am I somehow mixed-up with your first wife’s betrayal?”

“Don’t you dare talk to me about her.”

“I dare. I deserve the truth. It is not just about her infidelity, is it?”

“Don’t go there, Catherine. Not one more word.” He advanced on her, glaring down at her. His hands flexed as if he wanted to put his hands around her throat and strangle her. “You have no business.”

“Oh how you fight to keep up those walls to camouflage your secrets, to keep them concealed. It is a game your mind plays, over and over again.”

His jaw flexed. “Not one more word, I’m warning you.”

“There is a cancer rotting your spirit, John.”

His fists clenched, the muscles popped out on his neck. She saw something shattering inside of him, splintering his emotions from all rational control. A blind rage like fire swept over him. “Shut-up!”

“No.”

He grabbed his head and grimaced as if in pain and then dropped his hands to his side. “When I came back from the Texas-Mexican War…I found her with her lover.”

Loose ends dangled, puzzles cried out to be solved. “There’s more.”

He swept his hand across the table, sweeping the maps across the tent, his cigar box banged on the floor. “There’s more. She laughed in my face, told me she hated me. But that was nothing compared to what she revealed.”

Catherine saw how terribly he suffered, a deadly quiver, nothing more. She needed to goad him, to let him cleanse the infection, the cancer that chained his spirit, bracing herself and listening. “Go on.”

His handsome jaw was taut, his mouth, drawn into a ruthless, forbidding line. “She had my son aborted. The witch killed my son.”

“She gloated with her news, taunted me with it. Had gone to a backdoor slave shed with her lover to do the filthy deed, and then, glorying in triumph, smirking and exultant to not have brought my child into the world. Told me she had him killed well after the quickening. It took all my power and restraint not to kill her.”

“Do you know how that feels, to know your innocent child was murdered?” His eyes clouded, wrestling with countless emotions—rage, hate, shame, bewilderment—all emotional deformities.

Pin-points of heat seared her inner eyelids. “I cannot imagine.” Catherine searched his face, terrified of the growing aggression in him, a volcano ready to erupt. This was the demon that possessed him. Envisioning the events of John’s history, she put herself in his shoes, thought about the irrevocable loss of a child and the accompanying grief.

“In my mind, I was there a million times, never to be able to protect my son.”

“Listen to me, John. There is evil in this world. The war has its evil. There are people that are evil. But there is an overall good that supersedes this cancer.”

John glowered at her as if she were some bizarre beast, an oddity, warped and repulsive to his sight.

Could she reach him? Could she release the demons he locked inside?

In two steps, his hand shot out, twisting the thin fabric of her nightgown at the neckline, drawing it taut. Her chest rising and falling in rapid, harsh breaths, she stared down at the strong, roughened hand at her breasts, the same hand that had once caressed her with gentle passion. Abruptly the hand tightened and with one quick jerk he plucked the thin garment over her head, flinging it away from her body.

In a blur of unreality, he stripped off his shirt, and she stared blindly at the rippling muscles of his powerful shoulders and arms. His hands went to the waistband of his pants.

She took a burning ember and blew it into a raging fire. “You put up walls of hostility and distrust, fostering a denial, to become a fugitive from life and love and healing. Love is like a dam. If you let a small crack form, a drop of water can pass, and before long, no one will be able to limit the power of the stream and the entire dam will be taken down. Because when those walls come down, then love takes over and it no longer matters. To love is to lose control.”

The bed shifted beneath his weight as he stretched out on top of her naked body, his heavy weight covering her. Pain slashed across his features.

Panic trickled through her veins in icy dribbles. The tempest she had fostered was now a reality—an ugly, breathing reality. She shuddered, but pressed on. “John, you need to see through all of this.” She stared at his cynical, ruthless face while her tormented mind superimposed other, tranquil remembrances of him. She saw him debating her on every topic, playing the piano in her parlor, and gobbling down peaches in her kitchen. She saw him gazing tenderly into her eyes when he made love to her up on the mountain. She remembered him reciting his vows to her with all the sincerity of the world mirrored in his eyes.

She was right. John did love her. She loved him. Love, hate—both were powerful enough to command the moments of their lives. Beneath the loss of his child, John maintained his rage and detachment. That he was punishing her was certain. He shifted between her legs, and Catherine’s fear gave way to a deep, shattering sorrow. Her eyes ached with unshed tears for the proud man who had lost so much. She looked into his eyes and hesitantly laid her trembling fingers against his rigid jaw. “I—I’m sorry,” she whispered, her throat clogging. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want your apologies, and I don’t need your pity.”

His mouth came down on hers with savage brutality. He wedged his knee between her legs, grasped her hips, lifting them. Her eyes flew open. His harsh, bitter expression reeled above her just as he drew back and then rammed himself full length into her tight passage. A dry sob burned her throat as she offered her body as a vessel for his anguish. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, taking it all in, anything to release him from the torment and anger.

With a violence bred of rage, he stamped out his rejection and hurt and pain into Catherine. Rock hard and fully aroused, he drove into her, again and again, desire pulsing through his swollen rigid flesh, his gut ablaze with a need for her so ferocious he could not stop the impulse if he wanted to. His head dipped toward her sweet breast and he suckled until she cried out, her breath hot upon his neck. He stroked, caressed, fanned the flames he’d created, anything to punish her for the past she threw in his face. He wanted to bury himself inside her as deeply as he could and not come out until he got his fill. His fingers stroked her in time with his thrusts, his hand swept down her body, slicked across the small, sensitive piece of flesh at the core of her, rewarded when she raised her hips to him and whimpered.

Except when her fingers raked through his hair, her tender touch inflamed him. The sweet offering of her body, the submission to his rage, her head thrown back, the adoration in her eyes, completely exposed in her trust of him. He plumbed the hot fire in her loins, a heat he never imagined, her body arched to meet his deep plunging thrusts.

“I love you, John,” she gave way in a half-whisper, a half-cry, and it unraveled the last thread holding him together. Instantly John covered her mouth with his, taking all that she was giving and reacted to the spasmodic tightening of her muscles, pouring his seed into her womb.

Afraid his weight would crush her, John gathered her to him and rolled onto his side, taking her with him. Lying there, with Catherine cradled in his arms, his body still intimately joined to hers, he experienced a peace, unlike any he’d known in years. The blackness in his soul faded. He could feel it like the sun burning away the shadows, bringing light and warmth to a place that had known only darkness and ice for years. To see himself in his own reflection. He brushed back a wayward silky tress and cupped her chin in his hand until her blue eyes met his.

“Thank you, Catherine.”

She curled her finger through his hair and kissed him gently before laying her cheek upon his chest. There he held her close, reveling in the feel of her as he cradled her with his body, her heart beating next to his.

“I am so sorry for not trusting you, Catherine, for every failure and every wrong and for the heartache and sorrow.”

“There is nothing to forgive. You needed to figure things out. I pointed the way.”

It was the very way she loved. How she cared for everyone around her as though they were
her
orphans. He saw her as she’d been in Pleasant Valley, courageous and beautiful and overflowing with innocent allure in his arms. He remembered how she laughed at his stories of his family…how she had saved his life. He saw her rebellious and frightened from the prospect of marrying a man, a virtual stranger and her enemy, a man who had seduced her, and who she had known only a week. He remembered her words as if they were yesterday.
What does a Rebel general’s wife do? Will I have to knit sweaters for cannonballs or polish your rifle?

With a surge of remorse, he remembered when he walked in on her bathing the week before and had said
, “You have ceased to be.
You are my prisoner and my servant.”
And despite the brutal way he had treated her, she demonstrated nothing other than bravery and determination. Scalding rage at his own blindness and stupidity seized John, the spectacles, the horrid bun, a disguise. She had been frightened, and in hiding, and he damned well should have known. She was an innocent and pure, that he knew too, yet he had believed the lies of one man against her. He deserved to be shot.