And One Wore Gray by Heather Graham

against the door as his arms formed steel bands around her. She opened her mouth. One of his hands moved to clamp down hard over it.
    She was forced to stare into those endlessly blue eyes. His face, she realized, was a strikingly handsome one. His features were cleanly sculpted, very well defined.
    “Listen to me, ma’am. I do not want to …”
    He broke off. He took a deep breath. Callie realized that he was struggling to remain standing.
    “I do not want to …”
    He blinked, ink black lashes falling over his cheeks.A wild bravado filled Callie along with her realization that he was barely standing. She thrust away his hand and pushed against his chest with all of her might. “Let go of me, Reb!” she demanded.
    He fell to his knees.
    And then he keeled over.
    He lay flat on her floor by the door. For several seconds, she stared down at him. She prodded him with her toe to see if he would move. He did not.
    Was he dead?
    She wanted to swing open the door and shout for Captain Johnston, but she was certain that the horseman was long gone by now. And this Reb was no longer any danger to her.
    Gingerly she bent down, trying to decide if he was dead or alive.
    His hat had fallen aside, and she saw that he had a full head of near ebony hair, rich and waving just below his nape. He was handsome, and more, she thought, a sudden wave of pity sweeping over her. He had gained something more than beauty in his years. There was character to his face, something in the set of his jaw, in the fine lines etched about his eyes and his mouth.
    He is the enemy, she told herself.
    She saw a lock of damp, matted hair at his temple. She smoothed it back and saw that he had been grazed there by a bullet.
    He was also bleeding from his side. There was no rip or tear in his uniform, but a crimson stain was appearing over the gray wool of his frock coat. She rose and hurried into the kitchen, soaked a towel with cool water from the pump, and hurried back out to the parlor. She bathed his forehead and determined that the wound was not bad. He might live.
    She lay her hand upon his chest and waited, and then nearly jumped when she felt the beating of his heart.The blood staining his frock coat and shirt at his side disturbed her. She moved his coat back and then pulled away his shirt, gingerly pulling the tail from his breeches. A small pang struck her, and for the first time she didn’t think of him as being the enemy. His belly was taut, his chest was tightly muscled, his flesh was handsomely bronzed. His skin was very hot to her touch. Yank or Reb, this was what war brought, the loss of such men, so handsome, so gallant, so beautiful, and in their prime.
    Not so gallant! she thought with a sniff.
    She brought her towel up to bathe away the blood at his side.
    It was an old wound, she discovered. A slash above the hip, probably from a saber or a bayonet. It had reopened, and he lay bleeding from it.
    She pressed against the towel. The flow of blood seemed to stop.
    “You’re going to live, Reb,” she said aloud. “Maybe,” she murmured. She wasn’t convinced that Captain Johnston wanted any Rebs to live.
    And both sets of soldiers, from the North and from the South, dreaded the horror of the prison camps.
    Well, it wasn’t her problem. Her house was decimated. Not far from where the soldier lay were the shattered panes of her windows. This soldier had invaded her very home. She couldn’t care what happened to him after Captain Johnston took him away.
    She bit her lip, curious. He wore the insignia of a Confederate colonel of the cavalry. Southern uniforms were often very haphazard—she’d heard that many of the great southern generals still wore their old U.S. Army breeches with jackets and shirts of their own design. But this cavalryman was well dressed in gray with yellow cavalry trim. He came from money, she thought.
    There was a small leather wallet attached to theband of his scabbard. Certain that his eyes were still closed