Triumph Read Online Free

to speak, but she was too hurt, angry, and ashamed to address Taylor. I would have come to you! she wanted to cry. But I didn’t know where you were, and there was no time! You must understand, my father’s life is at risk ...
    She couldn’t explain. She lashed out instead. “Taylor, you’re being a truly wretched bastard. You don’t understand anything!” she screamed, her fingers trembling so hard she couldn’t get her buttons fastened. Both men were staring at her.
    She’d made a mistake with her bitter words, she quickly realized, for Raymond suddenly made a split second decision to defend her honor.
    Her honor. It was laughable, for she had none left.
    But Raymond made a dive for the sword he had so hastily discarded in his eagerness to be with her. He barely drew it from the sheath before the sound of crashing steel erupted in the night. Raymond’s sword went flying across the room, and the tip of Taylor’s blade was once again pressed to the Rebel’s throat.
    “Taylor!” Tia cried out, and at last dared look at her husband. “Don’t ... murder him. Please!”
    No, she had never seen such anger, so barely controlled. They had met and clashed before, they had argued, indeed, the war had never burned more brightly than between them. But this ... fury that now compelled him was such that she longed to shrink away, to run, to flee. Indeed, death itself would be far easier than facing what she must. He was tall, standing an even inch above Raymond, so filled with tension that the constriction of his muscles seemed evident even beneath the cut of his blue cavalry frockcoat. His eyes, a striking, curious hazel seemed to burn tonight with a red-gold fire as deadly as the haze about the moon. His features, very strongly and handsomely formed, were taut with his efforts to control the sheer fire of his anger.
    She wanted so badly to cry out to him again. She had no words, but she wanted the anguish in her voice to convey what had been in her heart.
    “Please, don’t ...” she said simply.
    Those eyes rested upon her. Fire in the night.
    Then Taylor gazed back at Raymond. “I’ve no intention of doing murder, sir. We are all forced to kill in battle, but I’ll not be a cold-blooded murderer. I’ve yet to kill any man over a harlot, even if that harlot be my own wife.”
    Tia felt as if she’d been slapped, struck with an icy hand. And yet it was at that precise moment that she realized their situation. Good God! The yard was filled with soldiers! Rebel soldiers, enemies who could take Taylor down, murder him, without a thought!
    “Call me what you will,” she cried, “but your life is in danger here, and you fool, there is much more at stake! There are nearly a hundred men outside preparing to march on my father’s house—”
    “No, Tia, no longer,” Taylor said, and his gaze focused upon her again. “The men below have been seized. Taken entirely by surprise. Quite a feat, if I do say so myself. Not a life lost, Colonel,” he informed Raymond.
    “So you’ll not murder me. What then?” Raymond asked.
    “I believe my men are coming for you now, if you would like to don your shirt and coat.”
    Raymond nodded, reaching for his shirt and frockcoat. The latter was barely slipped over his shoulders before two men appeared in the doorway. Yankee soldiers.
    “To the ship, Colonel?” asked one of the men, a bearded, blond-headed fellow of perhaps twenty-five.
    “Aye, Lieutenant Riley. Have Captain Maxwell take the lot of them north. Meet me with the horses below when the prisoners have been secured.”
    “Sir?” the lieutenant said politely to Raymond.
    Raymond looked at Tia. He bowed deeply to her. She dared do nothing but look back. The perfect soldier, Raymond accepted the situation—and the metal restraints slipped on his wrists by his Yankee captors. They departed the room.
    She remained dead still, waiting. She couldn’t face Taylor. She wanted to cry out again, burst into tears, throw