By April she still hadn't been able to buy any mules, so she and Samson and Shannon went out to till the fields. It was hard, backbreaking labor, but she knew that food was growing scarcer and scarcer, and that it was imperative that they grow their own vegetables. Shannon and she took turns behind the plow while Samson used his great bulk to pull it forward. The herd was small, though there would be new calves soon enough. By morning Kristin planned the day with Pete, by day she worked near the house, and supper did not come until the last of the daylight was gone. Kristin went to bed each night so exhausted that she thought very little about the war.

She didn't let herself think about Cole, though sometimes he stole into her dreams uninvited. Sometimes, no matter how exhausted she was when she went to bed, she imagined that he was with her. She forgot then that he had been one of Quant rill's raiders. She remembered only that he was the man who had touched her, the man who had awakened her. She lay in the moonlight and remembered him, remembered his sleek-muscled form walking silent and naked to her by night, remembered the way the moonlight had played over them both…

Sometimes she would awaken and she would be shaking, and she would remind herself that he had ridden with Quantrill, just like Zeke Moreau. She might be married to him now, but she could never, never lie with him again as she had before. He was another of Quant rill's killers, just like Zeke. Riding, burning, pillaging, murdering — raping, perhaps. She didn't know. He had come to her like a savior, but Quant rill's men had never obeyed laws of morality or decency. She wanted him to come back to her because she could not imagine him dead. She wanted him to come back to her and deny it all.

But he could not deny it, because it was the truth. Malachi had said so. Malachi had known how the truth would hurt, but hadn't been able to lie. There was no way for Cole to come and deny it. There was just no way at all.

Spring wore on. In May, while she was out in the south field with Samson, Pete suddenly came riding in from the north pasture. He ignored the newly sown field, riding over it to stop in front of Kristin.

"He's back, Miz Slater, he's back. They say that Quantrill is back, and that Quantrill and company do reign here again!"

                                               •        •        •

The house was still a long way off when Cole reined in his horse and looked across the plain at it. Things looked peaceful, mighty peaceful. Daisies were growing by the porch, and someone — Kristin? Shannon? — had hung little flowerpots from the handsome gingerbread on the front of the house.

It looked peaceful, mighty peaceful.

His heart hammered uncomfortably, and Cole realized that it had taken him a long time to come back. He didn't know quite why, but it had taken him longer than necessary. He hadn't been worried at all, at least not until he had heard that Quantrill was back. He didn't understand it. All through the winter, all through the early spring, he'd had dreams about her. He had wanted her. Wanted her with a longing that burned and ached and kept him staring at the ceiling or the night sky. Sometimes it had been as if he could reach out and touch her. And then everything had come back to him. The silky feel of her flesh and the velvety feel of her hair falling over his shoulders. The startling blue of her eyes, the sun gold of her hair, the fullness of her breasts in his hands…

Then, if he was sound asleep, he would remember the smell of smoke, and he would hear the sound of the shot, and he would see his wife, his first wife, his real wife… Running, running… And the smoke would be acrid on the air, and the hair that spilled over him would be a sable brown, and it would be blood that filled his hands.

It hurt to stay away. He needed her. He wanted her, wanted her with a raw, blinding, burning hunger. But the nightmares would never stay away. Never. Not while his wife's killer lived. Not while the war raged on.

He picked up the reins again and nudged his mount and started the slow trek toward the house. His breath had quickened. His blood had quickened. It coursed through him, raced through him, and it made him hot, and it made him nervous. Suddenly it seemed a long, long time since he had seen her last. It had been a long time. Almost half a year.

But she was his wife.

He swallowed harshly and wondered what his homecoming would be like. He remembered the night before he had left, and his groin went tight as wire and the excitement seemed to sweep like fire into his limbs, into his fingertips, into his heart and into his lungs.

They hadn't done so badly, he thought. Folks had surely done worse under the best of circumstances.

When the war ended…

Cole paused again, wondering if the war would ever end. Those in Kansas and Missouri had been living with the skirmishing since 1855, and hell, the first shots at Fort Sumter had only been fired in April of '61. Back then, Cole thought grimly, the rebels had thought they could whomp the Yankees in two weeks, and the Yankees had thought, before the first battle at Manassas, it would be easy to whip the Confederacy. But the North had been more determined than the South had ever imagined, and the South had been more resolute than the North had ever believed possible. And the war had dragged on and on. It had been more than two years now, and there was no end in sight.

So many battles. An Eastern front, a Western front. A Union navy, a Confederate navy, a battle of ironclads. New Orleans fallen, and now Vicksburg under siege. And men were still talking about the battle at Antietam Creek, where the bodies had piled high and the corn had been mown down by bullets and the stream had run red with blood.

He lifted his hands and looked at his threadbare gloves. He was wearing his full dress uniform, but his gold gloves were threadbare. His gray wool tunic and coat carried the gold epaulets of the cavalry, for though he was officially classified a scout he'd been assigned to the cavalry and was therefore no longer considered a spy. It was a fine distinction, Cole thought. And it was damned peculiar that as a scout he should spend so much of his time spying on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border. He wondered bleakly what it was all worth. In January he'd appeared before the Confederate Cabinet, and he'd reported honestly, as honestly as he could, on the jayhawkers' activities. Jim Lane and Doc Jennison, who had led the jayhawkers — the red-legs as they were sometimes known because of their uniforms — were animals. Jim Lane might be a U.S. senator, but he was still a fanatic and a murderer, every bit as bad as Quantrill. But the Union had gotten control of most of the jayhawkers. Most of them had been conscripted into the Union Army and sent far away from the border. As the Seventh Kansas, a number of jayhawkers had still been able to carry out raids on the Missouri side of the border, plundering and burning town after town, but then Major General Henry Halleck had ordered the company so far into the center of Kansas that it had been virtually impossible for the boys to jayhawk.

As long as he lived, Cole would hate the jayhawkers. As long as he lived, he would seek revenge. But his hatred had cooled enough that he could see that there was a real war being fought, a war in which men in blue and men in gray fought with a certain decency, a certain humanity. There were powerful Union politicians and military men who knew their own jayhawkers for the savages they were, and there were men like Halleck who were learning to control them.

No one had control of Quantrill.

By that spring, General Robert E. Lee had been given command of the entire Confederate Army. When he had met with that tall, dignified, soft-spoken man, Cole had felt as if the place he had left behind could not be real. War was ugly, blood and death were ugly, and screaming soldiers maimed and dying on torn-up earth were ugly, too. But nothing was so ugly as the total disregard for humanity that reigned on the border between Kansas and Missouri. Lee had listened to Cole, and Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, had listened long and carefully to him, too. Judah P. Benjamin, secretary of war, had taken his advice and when Quantrill had demanded a promotion and recognition, his request had been denied.

Cole wondered briefly if the violence would ever stop. He wondered if he would ever be able to cleanse his own heart of hatred.

Suddenly he forgot the war, forgot everything.

He could see the well to the left of the house, near the trough, and he could see Kristin standing there. She had just pulled up a pail of water.

Her hair was in braids, but a few golden strands had escaped from her hairpins and curled over her shoulders. She was dressed in simple gingham — no petticoats today — and she had opened the top buttons of her blouse. She dipped a handkerchief into the bucket and doused herself with the cool water, her face, her throat, her collarbone, then flesh bared by the open flaps of her blouse. Hot and dusty, she lifted the dipper from the pail and drank from it. Then she leaned back slightly and allowed the cool water to spill over her face and throat.

Cole's stomach tightened, and he felt his heartbeat in his throat, and he wondered what it was about the way she was standing, savoring the water, that was so provocative, so beguiling, so sensual. He nudged his horse again, eager to greet her.

He came in at a gallop. She spun around, startled. The water spilled over her blouse, and the wet fabric outlined her young breasts. Her eyes widened at the sight of him, first with panic, he thought, then with startled recognition. He drew up in front of her and dismounted in a leap. Her blouse was soaked, and her face was damp. Her lips were parted, and her face was streaked with dust. She was beautiful.