Elizabeth Lane - Lydia

“We’ll see.” His hand dropped from her arm. The pressure of his grip lingered, burning like a brand into her flesh.

“Sit down,” she said.

“I’ll stand.” His gaze had left her. Sarah watched his restless eyes as he surveyed the makeshift classroom that doubled as her living quarters. Puncheon benches, arranged in rows with the lowest in front, took up most of the floor space. A desk in one corner was piled with slates and battered readers. A potbellied stove, with a narrow counter along the nearby wall, provided for simple cooking. The door that led to her bedchamber was closed.

Silence chilled the room as he strode to the window. For what seemed like a very long time, he stood staring down at the street. From behind him, Sarah’s eyes traced the rigid contours of his shoulders through the sweat-stained leather vest and faded flannel shirt. Her gaze lingered on the flat, chestnut curls at the back of his sunburned neck. She tried not to remember how it had felt to be touched by him. She tried not to feel anything at all.

Abruptly he turned on her. “Damnation, I don’t understand any of it!” he exploded. “Not then, and not now! I don’t even know where to begin!”

Sarah glanced down at her clasped hands, then willed herself to raise her face and meet his condemning eyes. “Neither do I,” she said with forced calm. “Except that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“You took up spying for the fun of it, I suppose.” His bitter voice ripped into her.

“Don’t—” she murmured, but he was as implacable as a millstone. Biting back hurt, she stumbled on. “At first, I believed that what I was doing was noble and right. I didn’t realize how the consequences would just keep going on and on, like ripples when you toss a pebble into a lake—”

“Virgil’s dead. He was killed at Antietam.”

“I know.”

“Do you, now?” Donovan retorted savagely. “Did you feel anything for him? Anything at all?”

Sarah fought back a rush of bitter tears. She would not let him see her cry, she vowed. That would only feed his rage. And she would not tell him about the dreams—the nightmares of anguish, fear and guilt that time had done little to ease.

“You used my brother! Virgil loved you. He trusted you. And all that time—”

“There was a war on. I did what I had to!” For all her efforts to be calm, Sarah felt her own anger rising. She had hoped for understanding, even some kind of resolution. But it was clear that Donovan’s only intent was to hurt her.

His face, thrusting close to hers now, was dark with fury. “How many others did you use the same way? How many men died because of what you—”

Sarah’s hand flashed out and struck the side of his jaw. The slap echoed like a gunshot in the quiet room.

Shocked into silence, he stared at her. Sarah had half expected him to hit her back—that’s what Reginald Buckley, her long-dead husband, would have done. But Donovan did not move. Only a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed any sign of emotion in him.

Seconds crawled past as they faced each other, bristling like two hostile animals thrown into the same cage. Sarah could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing in the tense stillness. Her own heart was a drum in her ears. Her body felt feverish.

His eyes—dark green with flecks of fiery amber—drilled into hers. His face—not a truly handsome face, but strong, blunt and oddly sensual—was frozen into a determined mask, inches from her own.

Sarah’s nipples had shrunk to hard, brown raisins beneath her camisole. A poignant ache trickled downward from her chest to her thighs. She wished he would do something—grab her, curse her, stalk out of the room-anything but stand there like a stone, shattering her with his wintry fury.

With painful effort, she found her voice. “I think you’d better leave now,” she whispered.

“No—” A shudder went through him as he cleared the huskiness from his throat. “Not until I find out what I came to learn.”

Sarah took a step backward, widening the perilous distance between them. Fighting for self-control, she willed her thundering pulse to be still.

“I agreed to answer your questions, Donovan,” she declared firmly. “I did not agree to stand here and submit to your bullying!”

With a small sound that was somewhere between a groan and a snarl, he turned back to face the window. His shoulders rose and fell with the force of his harsh breathing as he stared outside at the glaring sky.

“Who are you?” He spoke without looking at her, his voice harsh with emotion.

Sarah gazed at his rigid back. “My name is Sarah Parker Buckley,” she said in a tightly modulated voice. “But I have been many women. Juliet…Ophelia…Portia…Beatrice…Lady Macbeth…” “And Lydia Taggart! Lord, an actress!” His fist crashed against the window frame. “And I suppose that sweet Southern voice was as false as the rest of you!”

“I was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts.” Sarah recited the words as if she were reading a script. “At sixteen, I eloped with Mr. Reginald Buckley, an actor and a Southerner—”

“Of the Savannah Buckleys?” The question snapped reflexively out of Donovan, an empty echo of a social order that no longer existed.

“I believe so, although I can’t be sure. Both Mr. Buckley and I were…estranged from our families. He taught me to perform with him. Shakespeare, mostly. We spent a number of years touring in the South.”

“And where is your Mr. Buckley now?”

“Dead. He passed away a few months before the war began.” No need to explain how, Sarah resolved. The fact that Reginald had been stabbed in a brawl over a saucy little Natchez whore was no longer of any consequence.

“An actress! Damnation, I should have seen through you! I should have guessed!” He spun back to face her, eyes blazing. “And this is your latest role, I suppose. Sanctified Sarah, the Angel of Miner’s Gulch!”

His words slashed her, but Sarah masked her pain with ice. “What you suppose is of no importance. I’m doing what I can to make peace with myself, and for that I will not apologize—not to you or to anyone in this town!”

His chest quivered in a visible effort to contain his anger. “Does my sister have any idea who—what—you were?”

“No. But even if she did, I think Varina would be fair. Unlike you, she tends to look for the good in people.”

“In your kind of woman, she’d have to look damned deep to find any! We’re beholden to you for last night, but even that won’t make up for what you did. It won’t buy back Virgil’s life.”

Sarah withered inside as his words struck her. Donovan had suffered a deep loss, she reminded herself. She could not blame him for being bitter. Even so, anger was her only defense against him.

“That’s enough!” she snapped. “I told you I wouldn’t stand for your bullying! Ask your questions and be done with it!” She glanced at the battered pendulum clock that hung on the far wall of the room. “You have five minutes before I start screaming for help.”

“Screaming?” He glared at her skeptically. “You’d really do that?”

“I’ve got friends in this town, and as you already know, I’m an accomplished actress.” Sarah punctuated her declaration with a defiant thrust of her chin. “Now, I’d say you’ve used up about twenty-five seconds. What else do you want to ask me?”

Donovan rumbled his exasperation. Turning away again, as if he could not even bear to look at her, he stared emptily through the window. The next question seemed to explode out of the darkest pit of his soul.

“Why? How could you have done it?”