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?”
“You fought for what you believed in. So did I.” Sarah spoke softly, addressing the rigid silhouette of his back. “I had seen the evils of slavery in the South, and I welcomed the chance to strike a blow against it.”
“And that was your only reason?” Donovan’s voice reflected bitter incredulity. “So now it’s Saint Sarah of the Slaves! Life for you is just one noble cause after the other, isn’t it?”
“Stop that!” Sarah would have slapped him again if he’d been standing close enough. “I’m trying my best to tell you the truth, Donovan, but you’re not making it easy.”
She paused, hoping, perhaps, for a word of apology from him. But it was not to be. Donovan’s resentful silence lay cold as winter in the room, broken only by the slow, rhythmic tick of the clock. Taking a sharp breath, Sarah plunged ahead.
“No, it wasn’t my only reason. My husband was dead. My family had disowned me. I had no money, no work, no home. The chance to live in Richmond as an agent for the Union was the only—”
Donovan had turned around. Sarah’s voice dried up in her throat as she saw his face.
“So it was a blasted convenience!” he rasped. “The chance to lie and betray under comfortable circumstances. The house, the servants, the parties—you lived as well as any so-called lady in Richmond! Compared to you, those women down there at the saloon are rank amateurs!”
“No!” Sarah reeled as her defenses crumbled. She had tried to be honest with Donovan, but what was the use when he wouldn’t even listen? How could she tell him what it had really been like for her? How could she tell him about the guilt-racked nights, the terrible dreams?
Seizing the advantage, he waded into the
