And One Wore Gray Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t begin to care for him. Even he wouldn’t be so cruel.
    But his footsteps were retreating down the stairway.
    “Daniel!” She found her voice and a frantic energy, at last. She raced after him, and this time it was she who accosted him at the foot of the stairs. “What are you doing? Give him to me! Daniel, he’s crying because he’s hungry. You can’t take him from me! Daniel, please! What do you think you’re doing?”
    Daniel stood stone still, staring at her. “He’s my son.”
    She didn’t know what to do, and she blundered, frightened of his behavior. “You can’t begin to know that—”
    “The hell I can’t. What a fool you are to try to deny it,” he said softly, coldly.
    “Daniel, give him back!”
    “He doesn’t belong here. He belongs at Cameron Hall,” Daniel said stubbornly.
    Callie’s mouth dropped. “You can’t take him! He’s barely two months old. You can’t care for him. Daniel, please!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She caught hold of his elbow and held on hard. “Daniel, he needs me. He’s crying because he’s hungry. You have to give him back to me.”
    A slow smile curved his mouth despite the baby’s hungry screaming. “You didn’t even intend to tell me about him, did you, Callie?”
    She shook her head, the tears now brimming in her eyes. “Yes, I intended to tell you!”
    “When the hell did you intend to tell me?” he bellowed.
    “You didn’t give me a chance. You came in here condemning me—”
    “You knew that I’d come back. Maybe you didn’t,” he corrected himself bitterly. “Maybe you thought that I’d rot and die in that camp!”
    “Damn you, Daniel, you can’t kidnap my son!”
    “My son. And he’ll have my name,” Daniel said. To her amazement, he started walking by her.
    “You can’t care for him!” she cried out. Of all the things that he might have done to her, she had never imagined this.
    He stopped and turned back with a smile. “Oh, but I can, Callie. I can find a mammy to care for him easily enough. Within the hour.”
    “You wouldn’t!” she breathed.
    “He’s a Cameron, Callie, and he’s going south tonight.”
    “You can’t take him away from me! He’s mine!”
    “And mine. Created under very bitter circumstances. He’s coming home, and that’s that.”
    “This is his home!”
    “No, his home is south, upon the James.”
    No matter what had passed between them, no matter how bitterly he might have learned to hate her after the months that lay between them, she still could not believe it when he stepped past her again.
    “I’ll call the law!” she cried out.
    “There is no law anymore, Callie,” he wearily said to her over his shoulder. “Just war.”
    She followed him to the door. Jared was crying with an ever greater vengeance, furious that his meal was being denied him. The tears she had tried to hold back burst from Callie’s eyes, and streamed down her face. “No! You cannot take him from me!” she thundered, and she slammed against him, beating her fists against his back.
    He spun on her, his blue eyes fierce, furious, ruthlessly cold.
    “Then you’d best be prepared to travel south, too, Callie. Because that’s where he’s going!”
    She stepped back, stunned once again.
    “What?”
    “My son is going south. If you want to be with him, you can prepare to ride with me. I’ll give you ten minutes to decide. Then we’re moving. Who knows, Meade just may decide to chase Lee’s army this time, though it seems poor Uncle Abe can’t find himself a general to come after Lee. But I’m not waiting. So if you’re coming, get ready.”
    South!
    She couldn’t travel to Virginia. Her heart had been set long ago, at the beginning of the war.
    No …
    She couldn’t travel south because she was against slavery, but more than that, because she had understoodPresident Lincoln’s war from the beginning. The first shots hadn’t been fired because of emancipation. The war had begun because the