His low words sent her thoughts spinning. She kept her eyes on the flames. “You have no sweetheart in Virginia?”
“None. The only woman I care about is right here.”
“Then remember, should you stay alive, right here is where I’ll be.”
“Then take the gift back.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re meant to have it. Because it means something, even if I stumbled across it in the snow coming here.”
They were dallying, if only to delay their inevitable parting. He knew it and she knew it, but time ticked on, the hall clock’s shuddering toll detested. Her concern over Coralie only added to her angst. She was crying again despite biting her lip till it nearly bled.
Was this what heartbroken felt like?
twelve
These are not troops. These are skeletons.
Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, on arriving at Valley Forge
Maebel Bohannon melted his iron resolve. He’d never been able to endure a woman’s tears, especially given he was the cause of them. Reaching out, Rhys took her in his arms, and that inexplicable sense of homecoming swept through him again, that completeness he felt in her company. He’d steeled himself against this happening, but she was his weakness and he wanted to comfort her.
Kiss her.
Chin resting atop her head, he savored her warmth and softness and that indefinable herbal-honey scent that marked her. Her silent tears dampened his linen shirt as he held her and stroked her silky hair caught up in pins beneath her cap, its lace edge tickling his rough fingers. He’d wanted this from the moment he’d met her. The strength of that first impression at her front door still shook him. Somehow he’d lost his heart to her the moment he’d first seen and spoken to her. The suddenness of their mutual attraction astonished him still.
Was he a fool for turning away from her?
“Mae, forgive me ... please.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. We’re just two people caught up in circumstances beyond our control. Our feelings aren’t wrong. The war is.”
“I won’t leave you heartbroken—or a widow.”
“I’m already heartbroken, Rhys. And I’d marry you tonight if you’d agree. I’d even follow the army for you.”
“Ladies don’t follow armies.”
“Martha Washington does.”
He chuckled. “Don’t say that in the general’s hearing.”
“I’m made of sterner stuff than you think.”
“I agree, but it would be an everlasting punishment to see you suffer in the cold and damp, hungry, mayhap even afraid. And always in danger.”
“Yet you do the same.”
“I’m a soldier, not a civilian.” He returned the pendant to her, tying the ribbon clumsily around her neck before leaving it dangling on her bodice. “You have my heart if not all the rest of me. Let that be enough.”
Stepping back, he fisted his hands lest he reach for her again. Her chin came up, and they regarded each other in the firelight, waging a stoic battle of wills, unable to disguise or deny their bond.
“Good night,” she finally whispered.
His return to camp was bleak, the hole inside him worsened by the fact Mae hadn’t appeared at breakfast when he’d gathered his belongings and left. He didn’t blame her. They’d said their goodbyes the night before in the firelit kitchen. For now, he needed to expend his remorse completing the Lowantica Valley hut that bore no resemblance to the Bohannons’ house.
He took up an ax and finished splitting shingles for the crude gable roof before climbing up a makeshift ladder and hammering them on. Chinking the cracks in the logs came next once the roof was weathertight. Glad he was of the hefty supply of firewoodbeneath one eave. The fireplace wasn’t sufficient to heat even so small a room, but it raised his men’s morale that he was among them ... even if it removed him from Mae.
