“Go on into the store and buy some peppermint sticks for yourselves and Samuel. Then start for home. I’ll catch up when I’ve finished my business here in town.”
“Thank you.” Annie counted the money carefully while Katy danced around her like a pup anticipating a bone. She tugged her sister toward the front of the store, splashing mud with her small, prancing boots.
Donovan waited until they’d gone inside. Then, taking a deep breath, he turned and strode deliberately down the alley, toward the back stairs.
For the past three years he’d tried to believe that the war was really over. But he’d been wrong. There was one battle left to fight. He would fight it here and now.
Sarah was wiping sums off the blackboard when she heard the sharp, heavy rap at the door. She knew at once who was there and why he had come.
For an instant she stood frozen, her heart in her throat. Every well-honed survival instinct screamed at her to leave the bolt in place and hide until he went away. But it would do no good, she realized. Donovan had seen the children leaving. He knew she was here, and he was quite capable of forcing his way inside.
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
