Smothering the sudden impulse to burst into laughter, Amanda studied Jesse's back. He rode just ahead of her, clad in the rough cotton shirt and tan butternut trousers of a backwoods farmer. He carried a heavy pistol stuck into his belt, an uncomfortable reminder of possible danger. Instead of horses, they rode mules, as more befitting farmers than soldiers. Or spies. She shuddered. If she remembered correctly, spies were usually hung if they were caught. Did that stricture apply to females as well? She wished she'd paid better attention to her local history.
Afternoon shadows deepened as they rode along the track Jesse apparently knew well. Hazy sunlight filtered through tree limbs. It was hot, but grew cooler the deeper they rode into the woods. Jesse said little to her, other than a few directions or a warning of low-hanging limbs, leaving Amanda alone with her tortured thoughts. Was it possible that a lifetime of dreaming and wishing had somehow engineered this phenomenon? If dreaming about a man could transport her to the past, perhaps so. In retrospect, she'd come to the conclusion that she'd somehow started this incredible journey by a combined desperation to save the house, a wish that she could change history, and a decision to put on a wedding dress that had been lost for a hundred and thirty years.
Jesse suddenly jerked his mule to a halt and hissed a command for Amanda to be still, startling her. She swallowed the urge to demand an explanation. Dark shadows stretched in the deep woods on each side of the road. Motionless in the shrouded silence surrounding them, she strained to hear what had made Jesse come to such an abrupt stop. It took several moments, but then she heard it, too-the unmistakable sounds of horses and men.
Silently, Jesse gestured for her to dismount, and Amanda did so with shaking hands. She held tight to her mule, putting a hand over its muzzle as she saw Jesse do to his, and followed him from the road into the woods. Sunlight wavered, revealing little more than hazy shadows. Hiding behind her mule in a thicket, Amanda was waiting nervously for something dreadful to happen when she saw Jesse draw his pistol and stand behind a tree.
Closing her eyes, she shivered with apprehension. When a hand fastened on her arm, she gasped, eyes jerking open. Jesse put a hand over her mouth.
"Hush. A Yankee patrol," he said with his lips against her ear. "Stay still and keep your mule quiet."
Nodding wordlessly, Amanda tried to still her wildly thumping heart. This was insane. What was she doing out here? Would she end up dead long before she'd ever been born? Did it work that way?
As the patrol drew close, Jesse seemed to sense her growing panic. He took her hand, giving it a slight squeeze. She held tightly, as if he were the only link to safety and sanity. Leaves crunched underfoot, and occasionally a small twig or fallen branch would snap as the patrol passed by close enough for her to see individual features on the men. Though garbed in blue uniforms and carrying weapons, the majority looked to her like boys instead of the hardened soldiers she'd always envisioned.
Recent rains had soaked the earth, and in the deep woods the sun had not yet dried the roads, leaving them quagmires that sucked at wagon wheels, men, and beasts. It seemed to take forever for the patrol to pass by, and Amanda fretted that at any moment, they would be discovered.
When at last the Yankees had gone and only the echoes of tramping feet and rattling wagons could be heard in the distance, she breathed easier. "I thought one of them looked directly at me once," she murmured. "I just knew we were goners."
Realizing mat Jesse was still holding her hand, she turned to look at him. He regarded her with a strange intensity as he released her hand.
"You could have called out, you know," he said softly.
"Why would I do that?"
He shrugged and said, "The Yankees would love to get their hands on me. They've been chasing me for two years now, ever since Memphis fell. There's a price on my head."
"I told you-I'm not a Northern spy. I have no intention of betraying you."
Jesse studied her for another moment, then looked away and said, “Not even if I tell you that the Federals call me the Hawk?"
"Really. Then I'm in famous company, I see. Should I be impressed?"
A faint smile tucked in one corner of his mouth, and the suggestion of a dimple creased his cheek. "You should be. Are you?"
"Very. I can truly say I've never before met one of Forrest's raiders."
"Rangers," he corrected with a grin. "And I hate to disappoint you, but I'm a free agent for the South. I work for whoever needs me most. Of course, since I'm pretty familiar with Memphis and northern Mississippi, I'm most effective here. When Forrest conducts his campaigns in Georgia and Alabama, I give whatever services I can to the next Confederate commander in this area."
"Ah. A man of versatility, then."
His eyes narrowed slightly, and she could feel a subtle change in the way he turned to look at her. “I can be very versatile," he murmured.
Amanda caught her breath. The rush of fear she'd felt when danger was near didn't compare with the sparks that vibrated between them now. She didn't quite understand it, but there was electricity in the air, almost as if a bolt of summer lightning had struck nearby. Never before had she felt this way, not even with her late husband. There had been none of the tension, the feeling as if she were a delicate instrument strung too tightly-the feeling that if she didn't somehow gain release, she would explode.
"Jesse," she said tentatively, her voice a whisper, "I can't explain what's happening to me anymore. Everything is so-so strange."
Filtered sunlight flickered through tree limbs to cast shadows on his face as he studied her for a long moment. "Strange?" he repeated. "Or just different?"
"Different, I suppose. No-strange as well. Oh, not just you. It's more than that."
"I don't suppose you could explain that a little bit better," he muttered, but the cynicism she'd half expected was absent from his tone.
"I wish I could. If I told you what has really happened to me, you'd be shocked. You wouldn't believe it. I'm not sure I do."
Reaching out, he curled his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face so that he could look into her eyes. "There are times things happen to people through no fault of their own. I would never condemn someone for what they did not do of their own free will."
Realizing that he thought she meant something else, Amanda opened her mouth to explain, but Jesse leaned forward and kissed her. Her instant reaction to the kiss took her so by surprise, she could not think. His lips were warm and firm on hers, and she couldn't help the surge of response that made her lift her arms and put them around his neck.
Before she quite knew what was happening, she found herself clinging to him in a passionate embrace that left her breathless and aching. Jesse kissed her mouth, then the line of her jaw up to her ear, bunching her hair in his fist to hold it, his breath heated against her skin. Amanda shivered and clung to him as if drowning.
It was like drowning. The tides of overwhelming reaction left her floundering, and she was helpless to do more than curve her hands over his shoulders and hold on when he trailed kisses down the arch of her throat. He was holding her up with one arm behind her back while his other hand tunneled into her hair to hold her head. The neat coils of hair she'd put atop her head that morning loosened, tumbling around her shoulders in a disorderly mass.
"This is crazy," he muttered, lips moving against the pulse at the base of her throat. His arm tightened behind her, pulling her hard against him. "We're likely to be shot if we don't pay better attention to what's going on around us."