Winter's Touch by Janis Reams Hudson Page B

packs and, after a word to Megan to stay put, she headed for the stream.
    He didn’t know her, Carson realized. He didn’t know this sister of his—his only sister—at all. Perhaps he never had. She’d been around eight when the war started. Up until then they had lived in the same house, but Bess had been under Gussie’s wing since their mother had died when Bess was born, while Carson’s time had been taken up with the running of the plantation.
    Coming home from the war last year to find a twelve-year-old young lady instead of his tiny little sister had been nearly as big a shock as realizing that the one-year-old daughter he’d kissed good-bye the day he’d marched off with the 12 th Georgia was suddenly a precocious five-year-old. Add to that the sight of their once gracious home burned to ashes, and it had been almost more than he could handle.
    God, he’d missed so much of their lives.
    And after all that time, he had then missed the entire next year as well when he had come out West to see about the ranch. Now Megan was six and Bess was thirteen, and he didn’t know either of them. And he wanted to. Desperately. They were his . A part of him in a way no one else would ever be. His only child, and his only sibling. Even if he had other children some day, Megan would always be his firstborn.
    Other children, however, would mean a wife, since he didn’t intend to go around siring bastards. But he didn’t know if he would ever marry again. If he did, it would be to provide a mother for Megan, and companionship for himself. Never again would he let lust, a pretty face, and a comely shape blind him to reality. God rest Julia’s conniving soul.
    As a fiancée, Julia Covington had been a delightful tease. As a mother, a disinterested failure. As a wife, a disloyal, unfaithful, lying, cheating, manipulating—
    Of course, he thought with chagrin, that didn’t say much for the man who allowed himself to be lied to, cheated on, manipulated, and all the rest.
    But that was in the past. Julia had more than paid for her behavior. Carson may have wished he’d never married her—except for getting Megan out of the bargain—but he hadn’t wished her dead.
    Only Julia would have been egotistical enough to leave her two-year-old daughter with her husband’s aunt, travel from Atlanta to Boston in the middle of a damn war , and flaunt her Yankee lover beneath the noses of her blue-blooded Yankee friends, just to prove she could.
    Ah, Julia.
    Maybe he was to blame, Carson thought, for not finding a way to make her happy.
    But no, he wasn’t going to accept the blame for his late wife’s behavior. She had made it clear early in their marriage that she’d only married him to shock her father.
    Shock him, she had. United States Senator Thomas Covington had been appalled that the apple of his eye would even speak to a Southerner, much less marry one, and that had been before the war.
    Carson shook his head, both at Julia and his bitter memories of her, and at himself, for allowing the memories to surface when he needed to be figuring a way out of this current situation.
    Whatever happened, he had to make certain Megan and Bess would be safe.
    By the time Bess returned with the water, Carson had spread out Innes’s bedroll where Megan was already curled up asleep, and he’d started a fire small enough to fit into his cupped hands. What little smoke it produced hit the ceiling of the cave and dissipated.
    While Innes tended Winter Fawn, Bess insisted on cleaning and bandaging his arrow wounds. The offer—more of a demand—floored him. Once again he thought, Who is this young woman?
    When she finished, he borrowed Innes’s knife and cut strips of willow bark to make a tea for Winter Fawn. There was nothing like willow bark tea to ease pain.
    Bess crawled into the bedroll with Megan and fell fast asleep. Poor little girls, so tired and afraid.
    Carson tried not to watch as Innes helped Winter Fawn sit up, then pulled her