For a moment Gabe quieted and stared up at his father. He studied Cole's face as gravely and as purposefully as Cole studied him. His little body was perfectly still.
Then he had had enough of his father. His mother was the one he wanted. He lifted up his chubby little legs and screwed up his face and kicked out and howled in outrage all at once. The cry brought a surge to Kristin's breasts that soaked the bodice of the gown she held so tightly against her. Cole covered his son again, then picked him up and set him against his chest. Kristin reached out her arms.
"Please, Cole, give him back to me. He's… he's hungry."
Cole hesitated, staring at her hard. Then he handed the baby to her. Kristin lowered her head and wished he would go away, but then she remembered that he had just come, and that if he went away again he might be killed this time. Color spilled over her cheeks, and she remembered just how they had gotten the baby, and she touched the baby's cheek with her finger and let her bodice fall open and led his little mouth to her breast. He latched on with an awful, pigletlike sound, and she found that she couldn't look up at all, even though she knew that Cole was still in the room and that his eyes were still on her.
The room was silent except for the baby's slurping. Then even that stopped, and Kristin realized he had fallen asleep. She lifted him to her shoulder and tried to get him to burp, but he was sleeping too soundly. Biting her lip, she rose and set him in the cradle that Samson had brought down from the attic. All the while she felt Cole's eyes on her.
Still, he didn't touch her, and he didn't speak to her. He stood by the cradle and stared down at the child. He was going to touch him again. Kristin bit her lips to keep from protesting. She watched in silence as Cole's long fingers tenderly touched the tiny cheek. She tried to button her bodice, then realized that she was drenched and that it was a foolish gesture. Flushing, she hurried to change her gown, but it didn't matter. Cole didn't seem to have noticed. She wondered if she should tiptoe away and leave him alone, but the moment she started for the door he was on his feet, and she realized that he had noted her every movement.
"Where do you think you're going?" His voice was low, but there was real anger in it, and real menace.
"I thought you might be hungry." He was silent. His gaze fell over her. Then he took a step toward her, and she almost screamed when his fingers gripped her arms and he shook her. "Damn you, Kristin! Damn you a thousand times over! You knew! You knew — and you didn't tell me! What right did you have to keep him from me?"
She tried to free herself, but she could not. She looked in his eyes, and she hated what she saw there, the uncompromising hardness.
"What rights have you got!" she choked out. "You ride in whenever you choose… You may feel you have obligations, but that is all you have! I—
"I ride in when I can get here!" he snapped, shaking her again. Her head fell back, and her eyes, glazed suddenly with tears, stared into his. "Lady, there is a war being fought out there! You know that. Of all women, you know that. I have done everything that is humanly possible, I have given you everything —"
"No! No, you have not given me everything! You have never given me the least little part of your —"
"I could have been killed. I don't know how many times I could have been killed on some stinking battlefield, and I wouldn't even have known I had a son!"
"Let me go!"
"No!"
"Please!" He was so close to her, and he felt so good. He was so warm, and she could feel the hardness of his body, and the touch of his hands. She wanted to touch his face and soothe away the lines around his eyes, and she wanted to fill the emptiness in his heart. She wanted to see his eyes alight with passion again. As she thought of the passion they had known together, her breasts seemed to fill again, but it was not for her child this time, it was for him. She needed to be held, to be touched.
To be loved.
"Please!" she repeated softly. She was so glad to see him, and their time together should be a precious respite against the war that raged on around them.
"Cole, I wanted to tell you when you were here, but all of a sudden we were fighting, because Major Emery had committed the horrible sin of telling me that you had been hurt. Mr. Cole Slater had been hurt, cut open and left bleeding, and he just couldn't bear that! Well, you are human, Cole, and you're supposed to bleed! And I should hurt for you, too, because damn it, what happened was awful!"
"Kristin, stop —"
"No! No, I will not stop! What have you got now? One week, one day? One lousy hour? Not long, I'll warrant. There are too many Federals around. So you stop, and you listen to me! I am grateful to you, Cole, eternally grateful. And I've been glad of this bargain of ours, heartily glad. You have fulfilled every promise you ever made me. But don't you dare yell at me now! I didn't write because I didn't want you getting killed, because I was afraid of your temper."
"My temper! I would never —"
"Yes, you would! You would have taken foolish chances to get here. You would have been afraid because of what happened to you with —"
She broke off, remembering that Emery had said that his wife had been pregnant when she had been killed.
"Oh, God, Cole, I'm sorry. I just realized that you would probably rather that she… that I "
"What the hell are you saying?" he asked hoarsely.
Kristin shook her head miserably. "Your wife, your first wife… You were expecting a child. I'm sorry, you must be thinking of her, that you would prefer —"
"That she had lived? That you had died? My God, Kristin, don't you ever say such a thing, don't you even think it, do you hear me?" He caught her against him. He threaded his fingers roughly through her hair, and suddenly he lowered his head and buried his face in the fragrant strands. "Don't you ever, ever think that!" he repeated. Then he looked at her again, and he smiled. It was a weary smile, and she saw how much the past few years had aged him, and her heart ached.
"He is a beautiful boy. He is the most wonderful child I've ever seen. And he is mine. Thank you. Thank you so very much."
"Oh, Cole!" she whispered. She was dangerously close to tears. He saw it and his tone changed.
"I'd still like to tan your hide for keeping the truth from me!"
"Cole, I really didn't mean to. I was afraid. I'm always afraid, it seems."
"I know, I know." He held her against him.
"Cole, you must be starved. Let me go down and have Delilah —"
"No, not now."
"Cole, you must need —"
He stepped away from her.
"I need my wife," he said. "I very, very badly need my wife."
He bent his head and kissed her, and then he lifted her into his arms and they fell upon the bed together.
"We have a son, Kristin," he said, and she laughed. "We have a son, and he's beautiful, and… and so are you."
It was a long, long time before either of them thought of any other kind of sustenance.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The days that followed were glorious for Kristin. It wasn't that anything had been settled between them. It was just that for a time they seemed to have achieved a private peace, and it was wonderful.
They did not stray far from the house. Cole explained how hard it had been to elude the patrols to reach her. But Kristin knew her own land, and she knew where they could safely travel. They picnicked on the banks of the river with the baby, and while he slept they splashed in the deliriously cool water. Kristin was first shocked and then ridiculously excited to dare to strip away her clothes in the broad daylight and make love in the water.