Lydia

The knock sounded again, louder this time, and even more insistent. Sarah willed her feet to move toward the sound. She had been expecting Donovan. And she had already made up her mind not to run away.

Once more she heard the angry thud of his big, rawboned knuckles on the wood, and his voice, chilling her with its cold contempt. “I know you’re in there, Lydia. And unless you want a scene this town will talk about for the next decade, you’d better open that door!”

Lydia.

Sarah’s ribs strained against the rigid stays of her corset. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she paused before the door, marshaling her courage. One hand rose instinctively to check her pince-nez spectacles. They were in place, perched firmly on the bridge of her nose. She hesitated, then deliberately removed them and laid them on one of the benches. The glasses were part of her masquerade—stage props, fitted with flat lenses that had no effect on her vision. It was time to put them aside. As far as Donovan was concerned, at least, the masquerade was over.

Donovan’s anger seemed to emanate through the heavy door planks. Sarah fumbled with the bolt, her icy fingers betraying her panic. In the course of the war, she had braved enough dangerous situations to fill a whole shelf full of dime novels. But never before, until now, had she faced the blistering rage of a man like Donovan Cole.

Steeling her resolve, she tugged at the door. It swung inward with an ominous groan of its weather-dampened hinges.

Donovan’s towering bulk filled the frame. His presence crackled like the air before a thunderstorm as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Suddenly everything else in the room seemed small.

Sarah’s throat was as dry as field cotton on an August afternoon. Fighting the impulse to run, she forced herself to stand straight and proud. He loomed above her—as he loomed above nearly everyone—his eyes searing in their unspoken indictment.

“Hello, Lydia.” His voice was thin with contempt.

Sarah spoke calmly, as if she were reciting lines from a play. “My name isn’t Lydia. It’s Sarah. Sarah Parker Buckley.”

The emotion that flickered across his face could have been anger, dismay or disbelief. “They told me you were dead. I saw your grave.”

“Lydia Taggart is dead. If you saw a grave, it was hers.”

His hand shot out and seized her upper arm, his fingers almost crushing bone in their powerful clasp. “No more riddles, Sarah, or Lydia, or whatever the hell your name is! I want answers. I want the truth about everything that happened. And once it’s out, I want you packed up and gone.”

Sarah glared up into the granite fury of his eyes. “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

His grip eased slightly, but he did not release her. “I’ve never done physical harm to a woman in my life,” he growled. “But heaven help me, if some things don’t get cleared up fast, I’ll shake you till your teeth fall out of your lying little head!”

“Let me go.” Sarah thrust out her chin in regal defiance, like Antigone, or perhaps Medea. Her theatrical training had served her well, she assured herself. Donovan could not possibly know that she was quivering like jelly inside.

“You’ll talk?”

She felt the hesitation in his fingers, the reluctance to trust her enough to let go. “I’ll answer any questions you want to ask me,” Sarah replied coldly. “But you might as well know right now, I have no intention of leaving Miner’s Gulch.”

“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.