Chapter One

 

December 1866

 

The ladder-back chair clattered to the floor as Michael Barclay shoved away from the table, one hand grasping the last bottle of whiskey like a lifeline.

“Dammit,” he muttered, stumbling sideways in the darkness and grabbing the edge of the table to keep vertical.

Once steady, he lifted the bottle and took another long swig, the liquid burning its way down his throat. He wiped the tears that sprang to his eyes and took another drink.

Thunder rumbled in the background.

He hunkered down below the tabletop, holding his breath, waiting for the whistle of a cannonball zooming past.

Nothing.

He listened again. More thunder. Distant, but headed his way.

Just a storm brewing.

With a sniff all he could smell was the damp air of a late Ohio autumn as the rain started up in earnest again. Winter would be here soon.

He relaxed and took another swig of the whiskey before standing straight.

He hoped the bridge didn’t get washed out and Higgins could get through with his new supply of whiskey. Not that it really helped.

If he was lucky, pretty soon he’d pass out for the night—oblivious to the pain, to the memories. Even in the dark, without the liquor he still saw the bodies littering the battlefield, the soldiers’ blood soaking the ground, their moans and wails still ringing in his ears.

God, how he hated the sound.

And the smell. The wretched acrid odor of gunpowder, burnt flesh and blood.

His stomach heaved and he lurched from the room, kicking an empty whiskey bottle across the floor as he went. Managing to find the bucket he dragged it to the bedside before he fell face-first onto the large blurred object in the room he hoped was his bed.

Funny thing, the nausea suddenly passed. At least when he lay down the room and his world quit spinning. He felt almost normal.

He snorted a harsh laugh.

Normal?

Nothing would ever be normal again. He’d come home half a man. He’d never teach again. He’d never make a living. Never marry Bella.

Bella.

Sunshine in a world of gray.

That’s what he thought the first time he’d seen her.

A dreary New England gray day in the beginning of winter. A cold Nor’easter had drained the trees of the last of their colorful leaves, dumping several inches of snow on the brown landscape. Nothing like his home in the rolling forested Ohio Valley.

He and several other students stood on the doorstep of the head of the art department. They’d been invited to a lecture on studio techniques of Vermeer. Rumor had it libations were always served when the professor held these at-home gatherings. Truth be known, his funds were low and he’d come for hot food and drink more than the boring topic of painting techniques used by a man long dead.

Then the door opened.

Thoughts of food and his ravenous state disappeared. The cold, stark landscape around him dissolved.

Before him stood the most beautiful, golden creature he’d ever beheld.

Professor Taylor’s daughter Arrabella seemed to glow with joy as she smiled in welcome. Her golden-blonde hair was piled on her head in such a fashion that her curls formed a halo about her heart-shaped face.

“Gentlemen, you’re just in time,” she said. “Father has just begun his lecture.”

Her sapphire-blue eyes twinkled with some inner humor as all the men on the porch doffed their hats and hurried into the warmth of the house.

As the others filed past, Michael drank in every inch of her.

Tall for a woman, he guessed she’d be only a few inches shorter than his six feet. The ocean-blue velvet gown she wore fit her straight shoulders and long arms snugly, as well as her bust, which left little doubt how well her breasts would fill a man’s hands. The bodice tapered over her flat stomach down to a skirt that flared out over her wider hips.

What would it feel like to hold those hips as she rode him?

“And what of you, sir? Don’t you wish to come inside? Or would you prefer to continue standing in the cold measuring me?”

The lightness of her voice, filled with amusement, brought him out of his lustful thoughts. He stammered his reply and started past her, only to have her lay her hand on his, a soft smile on her face and kindness written in her eyes.

“This is your first visit, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please call me Arrabella. Ma’am is my mother.”

He returned her smile. “I’m Michael, Michael Barclay.”

“Go to the kitchen first, Mr. Barclay. If you wait until after the lecture, the other students will have eaten all the food,” she said with a conspiratorial wink.

From that day on, he’d lived for every moment spent with her.

Why wouldn’t she stay out of his dreams? His heart ached so badly at her name he thought his chest would explode like a cannon. And his cock. God, just the memory of that first meeting had it straining to be released.

With shaky hands he set the bottle down and opened the buttons on his britches. Then he wiggled his pants all the way off. He grasped his cock with one hand, the bottle with the other. Every night this was the only way to get to sleep—working his manhood to thoughts of Bella while drowning the screams of dying men with whiskey.

He lifted the bottle and drained it.

*****

Arrabella Taylor squared her shoulders and inhaled deeply. The scent of rain lay heavy in the cool evening air. She stared up the path leading away from the red door of the cottage to the wagon starting back to town and wondered for the fifth time in as many minutes at the sanity of her plan.

When she left Cambridge three days earlier to travel by train to Ohio, she’d been convinced there was no other choice. Now, her courage wavered just when she needed it most. Her palms started to sweat. On the other side of that door was the man she loved. The man who’d released her from her promise to wait for him with a terse letter. The wording of it was so unlike Michael that she knew he needed her help—whether he wanted it or not.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, as the old adage went.

Well, she was desperate. She’d waited six months for Michael to send word for her to join him. Six months since he’d returned home wounded from the war. Six lonely months during which her arms cried out to hold him again.

Before the South seceded and the country plunged into a war that tore it in half, she and Michael’s future looked bright. He, a new professor of art, she the daughter of his mentor and a model for Michael’s paintings. The night she’d agreed to marry him they’d also sealed their promises with a wild passionate joining. The memories still pooled liquid heat between her thighs.

She’d be damned if she’d let society’s sensibilities or Michael’s stubbornness reduce her love for him to just those memories.

With another deep breath, she pulled the latch on the gate, letting it swing open, then lifted her valise and stepped across the threshold. Gate fastened once more, she marched up the weed-covered path to the porch with the military precision of a platoon storming the citadel.

She rapped on the door and waited.

No answer.

“Michael?” She knocked a little louder.

Still no answer came from inside.

For a moment she wondered if the driver from town had dropped her at the right cottage. She pulled the letter from Michael out of her reticule—the one he’d used to release her from their engagement. She’d shown it to the mercantile owner in town, who’d reassured her this was Michael’s home.

“You sure you want to go out there, Miss?” Mr. Higgins asked as he helped her onto the delivery wagon’s seat next to his son. “Mr. Barclay doesn’t want any visitors.  He made it real clear when he moved back to his father’s farm after the war.”

She reassured him she still wanted to go.

“No one visits him? Ever?” she’d asked the son on the trip out to the farm. Pain gripped her at the loneliness Michael must be enduring.

“Yes, ma’am. He made that clear to anyone who ventured out for a visit with a shotgun blast over their heads. The only ones he lets come by is my pa and me when we bring him his monthly supplies.”

Standing on the porch after the young man deposited two heavy crates beside her, she reassured him she indeed wanted to stay. As she watched the wagon and her escort disappear into the darkening night, she wondered what kind of wounds Michael had endured that he didn’t want any company. Had he been so badly scarred or maimed that he feared seeing repulsion on other people’s faces? On hers? Is that why he’d tried to push her away? Did he think so little of her or her love for him?

She pushed the anger away. She’d come here to fight for their love, not fight with Michael. She slipped the letter back in her bag then lifted the door latch.

Musty air, mixed with stale whiskey, assaulted her senses immediately. She stood rooted in the doorway letting her eyes grow accustomed to the dim evening light filtering into the room. It was a large room extending from a fireplace flanked by an overstuffed settee and large comfortable chairs on one side, to a kitchen area and a second fireplace on the other. Both mantles held unlit oil lamps.

A chair lay on the floor near the wooden table in the kitchen. Littered around it were numerous whiskey bottles.

Dear God. Was this the “monthly supplies” Mr. Higgins delivered? Whiskey?

“Oh, Michael. What happened to you?” she whispered, her heart aching as she pulled her bags into the house and closed the door.

Careful not to trip in the fading light, she retrieved a lantern from the living room mantle. She took out a kerchief from her bag and cleaned the layers of dust from it. Finding a box of matches on the mantle she lit the wick.

Before exploring Michael’s home, she dragged the box of supplies in out of the damp night air.

Once that was finished she carried the lamp to the table, set it down, then removed her gloves and studied the rest of the house. The bottles on the floor seemed to make a path to a door. She gathered them up one by one, setting them aside so no one would get hurt in the middle of the night, working her way closer to the room beyond the door.

A soft snore sounded in the darkness.

Michael.

Just knowing he was here, not injured out in the fields or forest beyond the house—fears she hadn’t even admitted to herself— lessened the ache in her chest a little.

Inside the room she tiptoed around the bed.

Naked, his skin fairly glowed in the soft lamplight against the bed sheets. His broad shoulders tapered down to his waist, the dent of his spine begging for her to run her fingers down it as she had so many times before until she could slide both hands over the firm round cheeks of his ass, just above his solid thighs and calves.

What she’d give to be a sculptor. To mold or chisel his form for the world to see. He was the most beautiful specimen of a man she’d ever seen, alive or in any museum.

She eased closer. His face buried in the pillow, she couldn’t see his features, but his ebony hair, usually cut very short, had grown long and shaggy, caressing his shoulders. A thick beard covered his lower face, shaggy as his hair.

Her gaze wandered over him again. Something beneath one arm caught her gaze. A long jagged scar sliced down and around his ribs.

Dear God, how had he gotten this?

Imagining how he must’ve suffered, one hand covering her mouth to prevent a sob from escaping, she ran the other over the puckered edges—raised and angry against the smooth hard muscles of his back.

A moan escaped him and he turned.

“Michael?” she whispered.

“Bella.”

Her name sounded like a wish on his lips.

“It’s me, sweetheart.”

“Bella.”

He reached out and bumped her shoulder in the semi-darkness then slid his hand up her neck where she’d pinned her hair into a bun. He sank his hands into the thick mass like he’d done so many times before and pulled her toward him. “I’ve missed you so much.”

His lips claimed hers, hot and hard, as if they hadn’t been separated for the past four years. She melted into him, her lips parting beneath his, allowing his tongue to swoop in and awaken her passions.

Not breaking contact, he pulled her into the bed, rolling until she was halfway beneath him. She ran one hand over his back, her fingers remembering each defined muscle. The other hand she slipped into the thick mane of his hair, exploring the silken thickness.

Holding him close, she gloried in the weight of his body pressing on hers. Her nipples grew taut and ached for the feel of his tongue.

As if he read her mind, his fingers quickly opened the buttons of her bodice and pushed aside her silk chemise. Cool air caressed her breasts, drawing the nipples even tighter for a moment before his warm hands cupped them both.

Releasing her lips, he slid his scruffy beard across her cheek then down her neck to her breast. The hundreds of tiny scrapes sent shivers coursing over her body. She ground her sex against the firm thigh pressed between hers.

“Such beauties,” he mumbled, his warm breath heating her chilled skin. Then he latched onto one nipple and suckled.

“Oh, Michael, yes.” She gripped his hair and arched her back, offering him more, wanting more. He continued to suckle first one breast then the other, until she writhed beneath him.

With one free hand, he gathered her skirts up between them then slid his hand between her spread thighs to her womanhood. He stroked her through the slit in her pantaloons.

As it always was between them, his merest kiss or touch ignited her body and liquid heat flowed from her nether lips ready for him to claim her as his. She ran her hands down his back, across his scar to his naked buttocks, gripping him by both cheeks and pulling him between her thighs.

“Ah, Bella, love you so much,” he murmured against her lips as he sank deep inside her.

The stretching to accommodate his size after so long a time apart forced a moan from her that he swallowed with another kiss. He tasted of whiskey—sweet, hot, forbidden.

“Ah, God, perfection,” he moaned before claiming her lips once more as he slid out slightly then thrust back inside.

Arrabella pulled her knees up to slide her feet legs along his, the action thrusting her hips into his.

“That’s it Bella-mine, give it to me.”

Taking him deeper inside, she reveled in the connection her body craved like air.

“Michael…Michael…love me…”

As if he’d been waiting for her to beg, he started rocking his hips. His sweat-slicked ass cheeks pumped against her hands, his cock sliding deep into her channel then out to the cleft, only to surge back inside. Each movement wrought more moans from her, encouragement for him to take them both to the precipice.

“Bella, love. It’s been so long. Need you so bad.”

With each thrust her body wound tighter. The connection to him she’d been denied for so long fueling her own hips to rise and meet him, clenching him deep inside her, releasing as he pulled back, then welcoming him back inside.

How she’d missed the power of him, his claiming her as his, marking her as no one ever would again.

“Come with me, Bella,” he rasped, plunging deeper, faster.

Suddenly, her body responded to his command. She surged against him, clenching him deep inside her, the world shattering as she shouted her release.

“Fuck. Yes,” he groaned between clenched teeth as he joined her, pumping his seed deep inside her.

As her body relaxed and settled down to earth, Arrabella’s eyes grew heavy. A few moments later, Michael shifted slightly then drifted to her left. One arm draped over her body, holding her close, his rhythmic breathing sounded like music in her ear.

Her travel-weary body relaxed and feeling safe in his arms, her mind filled with questions.

If he still loved and needed her so badly that he could make such passionate love to her, why had he broken their engagement? What had he meant when he’d written You deserve a whole man? What secret was he hiding? What had the war done to him?