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careful.”
    Dominic’s reply was a bored closing of his green eyes and a wide yawn. Helen laughed, bent, scooped the cat up in her arms, and went inside. Once in the bedroom, Dominic squirmed out of her grasp, raced across the room, and leaped agilely up onto the high feather mattress. Stretching out at the foot of the bed, he flexed his front paws several times, extending the sharp claws, pulling at the bedcovers. Then he yawned again, laid his aristocratic head down, and allowed his lazy lids to close over the green eyes.
    Dom was fast asleep.
    Helen wished, and not for the first time, that it was as easy for her to fall asleep as it was for her cat. How wonderful to simply stretch out and be immediately lost in peaceful, dreamless slumber.
    It wasn’t that way for her. It was never easy to fall asleep, no matter how hard she had worked or how weary she was when she went to bed. Bed was a lonely—sometimes frightening—place to her. It had been since Will had gone away to war.
    Sighing, Helen sat down on the side of the bed. From a carved wooden box on the night table, she took out an oval-shaped cameo locket. She opened the locket to the small photograph inside. A young, handsome Will Courtney smiled up at her.
    Helen looked at the smiling Will for a long wistful moment, raised the cameo to her lips, and kissed the tiny photograph. She snapped the locket shut and placed it back inside the carved box. She reached for the loaded pistol. Tucking it under her pillow, she recalled the Yankee’s words: “You won’t need the gun to protect yourself.… At least not from me.”
    Maybe not. All the same, she’d feel better knowing the revolver was there within easy reach. Just like always.
    Helen turned out the lamp and got into bed. She stretched luxuriously, sighed, but didn’t bother closing her eyes. What was the use? She’d lie awake half the night. Just like … just like … just like …
    Before the thought could be completed, Helen Courtney was sound asleep.
    Kurt Northway wasn’t.
    While his son slept soundly beside him, Kurt was wide awake. He lay on his back, arms folded beneath his head, wondering why sleep wouldn’t come.
    This clean spacious room was the best quarters he had been billeted in since before the war. The bed where he lay was soft and comfortable, the sheets freshly laundered and smelling faintly of cedar. Shafts of moonlight made pleasing patterns on the floor and walls. A gentle breeze ruffled the blue-and-white-checked curtains. The night stillness was peaceful, lulling.
    He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t dirty. He wasn’t cold. He wasn’t hot. He wasn’t lying on the hard ground somewhere. He wasn’t listening for the whine of miniballs. He didn’t have to wonder if he’d live to see the sunrise.
    Still, he couldn’t sleep.
    A restlessness he couldn’t curb made Kurt throw back the covering sheet and ease himself out of bed. He tiptoed across the room, slipped out the door, and sat down on the stoop.
    A gentle night wind off the bay cooled his heated skin, lifted locks of his dark hair. The sweet scent of honeysuckle carried on the welcome breeze. High overhead a full moon sailed leisurely around the heavens, silvering everything below.
    Kurt’s brooding eyes slowly lifted to that romantic summer moon.
    A deepening loneliness came over him. Inevitably he began thinking of another night. Another time. Another place.
    With vivid clarity he remembered the lovely warm summer night when he and the young, trusting Gail had lain stretched out naked in the moonlight spilling across the bed in their honeymoon suite. Kissing. Talking. Laughing.
    Making love.
    Kurt felt a familiar squeezing in his chest and wondered if he’d ever be free of the pain. It was strange, but since the war had ended and he’d been reunited with Charlie, he missed his wife more than ever.
    Hoofbeats.
    The steady drumming of a horse’s hooves striking the ground pulled Helen from a deep, restful slumber. Startled