“Get out.”
“I’ve every right to be here.” He slid into the room and braced his shoulders on the wall, resting the back of his head on the bare wood. “You’re the one who’s squatting.”
“I don’t know who you are, mister, but this is my home fair and proper.”
“I’m Bennett Collier.” He began a slow slide down the wall. “Unless you’ve got a deed—”
The intruder went limp and crumpled to the floor.
Chapter Two
“Amon!”
The hoarse cry hit Ben’s ears like cannon fire, yanking him up and away from the hard surface at his back. Harsh light stabbed his eyes. He slammed them shut.
A weight in the center of his chest pushed him down while a cough flayed a throat scraped raw by his own voice.
“Just rest easy, mister.” Rustic music wound through the woman’s tone.
His heart pounded a hole through his ribs. If not for the pressure on his breastbone, soft, cool…
He clapped a palm atop the sensation. A feminine hand withdrew, and his fingers met bare chest.
Amon. His brother’s name, musket fire, shrieking artillery shells—all of it scrambled. A cold fist squeezed his lungs.
Breathe. You have to breathe.
With every gulp of air, damp and hot, his pulse steadied. No trace of powder smoke. No whiff of brimstone. No screams of the damned. His thoughts settled enough for him to snag one: Hell ended months ago.
He licked cracked lips and eased open his eyes.
The cabin. The squatter. She’d held a gun on him. He moved a leg beneath the blankets shrouding the lower half of his body. Coarse wool scratched his skin. Where were his clothes, his weapons? Forcing himself up on his forearms, he cast a glance around the small room, blinking to rein in the dizziness.
Her back to him, the woman stood at a rough-hewn table against the wall on the opposite side of the hearth. Sunlight leaked through chinks in the mortar between the split logs, gleaming along a russet braid that traced a stiff backbone. A faded calico dress hung loose on a frame without softness or curves.
She turned and caught his stare in eyes the color of warm cognac. A soldier’s eyes: resigned, yet defiant; determined to go down fighting.
Levering up onto stiff arms, he braced his palms on the floor.
The woman knelt and shoved a tin cup forward. “Drink.”
His gaze dropped to the vessel for only a moment before returning to those fascinating eyes.
Her lips and brows pinched. “Drink or I’ll pour it down your throat. I didn’t nurse you through three days of the ague just to turn around and poison you.”
The rustic music he’d heard earlier underlay the sharp words. Holding her gaze, he shifted his weight, took the cup, and drew it to his lips. The sweet wine almost hid a familiar bitterness. “You found the quinine.”
Quinine—more precious than gold to any soldier who’d spent too much time in the swamps. He’d stolen the near-empty bottle. The righteous Bennett Collier, a common thief. “You went through my saddlebags.”
“I didn’t take nothin’ else. I swear it.”
He hadn’t meant the statement as an accusation. “Nothing in there worth taking.” Except the bundle of letters from his father. I miss you, son. Keep yourself alive and come home. Three years too late. He nearly choked trying to clear his throat.
He tossed back the rest of the wine. The bitter drug sharpened a pain in his chest; the sweet wine, a bitter memory. “Muscadine.”
“Whiskey’s better, but the wine’s all I got. Them grapes grow wild right outside the house.”
“They grow wild all over the ranch.” He and Amon had scrambled every fall to beat the cattle to the vines so Jenny would have enough grapes to make the punch everyone looked forward to at Christmas. Jenny. He’d been such a fool.
Cool fingertips touched his cheek, then his brow. “I think the fever’s gone.”
He snapped back into himself. “Yeah.” The bone-jarring chills, too. Maybe they’d stay gone for a while this time. “Who do I have to thank for her kindness?”
****
The Reb had seemed harmless wracked by delirium, but now, with those Union-blue eyes open again… Maggie looked away. “Maggie Fannin. Mrs. Maggie Fannin.”
“Mrs. Maggie Fannin.” His gaze, intense enough to burn holes through her dress and singe the skin beneath, left her to wander the room. Looking for evidence of a husband, she supposed. “Where’s Mr. Fannin?”
“He’ll be along directly.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“A while.”
When the probing heat returned, she met him eye-to-eye, forcing herself not to squirm. Color had returned to his skin, and his hair no longer clung like a nest of wet snakes. She raised her chin and still he stared, for much too long, as though he believed the answers he sought lay within her bones.