Page 86 of Always to Remember
She lifted her gaze to his, the moonlight reflected in her tears. “I kept hoping someone had made a mistake, that somehow he’d been spared, and one morning I’d look out the window and see him walking home. But he’s not going to come home, is he?”
Clay shook his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring Kirk home. I should have at least brought him home, even if it meant carrying him on my back.”
“They were his friends, his men. He organized them and had them all enlist together so they could fight together. He was their leader. They fought and died at his side. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave them. Why didn’t you tell us you’d buried them?”
“I didn’t figure anyone around here would appreciate the fact that I’d touched their honored sons. You can’t take a man off a battlefield without touching him. You can’t bury him without touching him. I did what I did because those men had been my friends, and they deserved more than a mass grave. I didn’t do it to please their fathers. The day you came to see me about making the monument, you didn’t even want me to say Kirk’s name. How would you have felt then if you’d known I’d held him in my arms and wept over him?”
“I would have hated you more.” Touching her fingers to the white hair at his temples, Meg wondered if his quest at Gettysburg had aged him. She tried to imagine the horror he’d faced, wading through a field littered with bodies, searching for those he knew, smelling the stench that must have risen higher and higher with each passing day, and carrying mangled bodies to a place where they might rest in peace. Despite Clay’s words that Kirk looked as though he’d fallen asleep, Meg could not imagine that death ever came silently during war. Kirk would have fought death as diligently as he’d fought the Union soldiers. Pressing her face against Clay’s chest, she released the agony of her grief, no longer certain if the tears she shed were for Kirk … or for Clay.
Clay felt the small tremor travel along Meg’s back. He tightened his hold on her. “Meg?”
Her trembling increased in intensity. Where were the twins when he needed them? What had they said to her? What could he say to her to ease her hurt?
She cried hard mournful sobs that rose from the deep well of her heart. He gazed at the stars. He supposed if she needed or wanted more from him than his arms around her, she’d tell him.
She sniffed inelegantly. “Do you have a handkerchief?”
“No, ma’am.”
She lifted her skirt and blew her nose before wiping the tears from her cheeks. He caught a glimpse of white cotton and closed his eyes against the sight. He’d never realized how alluring white cotton could be.
“It hurts to cry,” she said, her voice raspy.
“It hurts worse not to.”
“Did you cry?”
“For four days straight.”
“Is that how long it took you to bury them?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a voice that sounded like stone grating against stone.
She looked to the heavens. “The moon’s pretty tonight.”
He wanted to tell her she was pretty tonight, but he didn’t know how to phrase the words so he wouldn’t sound like some lovesick schoolboy.
She pressed her finger to his lips. “You said you spent a lot of time thinking about our kiss. I thought about it as well.” She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and threaded her fingers up into his hair.
“Meg—” He wasn’t certain what he’d planned to say, but he knew it couldn’t have been important because the words drifted from his mind as soon as her lips lighted upon his. Her mouth was as warm as the shade in August and as soft as a piece of velvet that his mother had sewn into one of her quilts.
She touched the tip of her tongue to one corner of his mouth, then to the other. She nibbled on his lower lip, and he felt as though she were pulling him through the keyhole of hell into heaven.
He cradled her face between his hands, angled his mouth over hers, and welcomed the bliss she offered. Boldly, she gave her tongue the freedom to roam within his mouth. She sighed. He moaned.
He thought a man could become spoiled touching a woman. He might never want to touch stone again. Stone wasn’t warm. It didn’t alter its shape with the gentlest of pressures. Stone didn’t breathe so he could feel its moisture on his face. Rocks didn’t make soft sounds that he’d carry with him until the day he died.
She drew her mouth away from his, and he forced himself not to follow and reclaim what he wanted.
Her eyes were dark within the shadows of the night, but he felt the intensity of her gaze as strongly as he felt her fingers tighten their hold on his neck.
“I hate you,” she whispered hoarsely.
He lowered his hands from her face. “I know.”
“So why am I here?” She trailed her fingers over his face, touching every line, crease, and crevice. “Robert kissed me tonight.” She rubbed her thumb over his lower lip. “And all I could think about was kissing you.”
She returned her mouth to his. If this was hate, he’d probably die if the woman ever loved him. His heart beat so hard he was certain she could feel it thrumming through his shirt. Each breath he took carried with it the scent of honeysuckle. Her hands, so small, slipped beneath the collar of his shirt. Her slim fingers moved gently, creating small circles on his neck that seemed to travel clear down to his toes. Then she parted her lips and gave him the greatest treasure of all: hot, moist, and silky, her mouth invited him home.
