Die Once Live Twice by Lawrence Dorr Read Free Book Online Page A

night and fantasized about them as man and wife, but she still felt sure he was a scoundrel, a playboy only interested in adding her to his conquests. This proposal did not seem like reality.
    Patrick stood and she looked up at him quizzically. He took her hands and lifted her to her feet, slid one hand around her waist and the other behind her neck and pulled her tightly to him as her lips parted to meet his. The kiss was reality. They dropped to their knees, still embracing. Patrick lowered her to the ground and rolled on top of her. She felt his erection against her pelvis. So that’s what it feels like . Her married friend’s stories flitted through her brain. She moaned out loud. Patrick began to loosen her bodice.
    No. I’ve got to stop or we never will . She pushed him up. “Patrick. Patrick. It is too soon. I can’t say for sure I will marry you. And I will save myself for my husband. It is cruel to say, but you might die at war. Where am I then?”
    “I will never die. I promise you.” He was flummoxed by his emotions. His passion had dissipated, but his longing had grown. He had a strange lack of control of his feelings. “I love you,” he blurted, with as much surprise as intention.
    She lifted her head, put both her hands behind his ears and kissed him sweetly, holding the embrace until she needed air. “Enough,” she said. Then she gathered the picnic remains while he collected the horses, and they rode back to the Donovan estate in silence, each thinking about what they wished had happened and each wondering about the days to come.

Chapter Five

WAR AND LOVE
    P atrick Sullivan lay in the damp weeds listening for the sounds of rebels. He and eight of his men had settled in the wet, fragrant ravine so he could watch the sloping hill that led east to Chancellorsville. The marshy grass offered good cover, but the conditions were muddy, wet and cold for May. “They’ll send out a reconnaissance team to scout our positions on the high ground,” he had explained to his men. “Tether your horses. And no fires.” Each man wore a dark blue waist-length coat and sky-blue wool pants over black boots. Their forage caps were tilted forward and buckled under their chins. No one expected to get any sleep. Patrick stared into the black void, listening for sounds of men on horseback.
    So far, Patrick’s war had not held glory—only blood, disease, and death. Crowded, filthy camps. Fits of diarrhea. Sheer terror when musket balls flew by him. Sadness when one of his men died. His men followed him faithfully. His instinct for danger and where to take the fight astonished even veteran soldiers. But he was beginning to think his fame could be better sought in Philadelphia, where there was love, too. His embrace with Katherine by the brook had been the beginning of a two-year love affair that consumed him. Each letter from her swelled his desire. She wrote that she wanted to be more than business partners and spoke of her love.
    Patrick’s ears still rang from the cacophony of battle, a fierce fourhour firefight near the town of Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Union General Joe Hooker had been ordered by President Lincoln to take the fight to enemy General Robert E. Lee and push him back to Richmond. But even though Hooker had twice Lee’s troops, Hooker had pulled back the day before. Now, May 2, General Oliver Howard’s division was protecting the right flank for the Army of the Potomac.
    Patrick was worried. “It isn’t safe here,” he’d said to his men when they tethered their horses. “We’re not on high ground and there’s no embankment to shield us.” To their backs was the thick underbrush known as the Wilderness.
    So he was not surprised when at 5:30 in the evening, rebels came running out of the brush with their chilling cutthroat yell. “It’s that bastard Jackson,” Patrick yelled to his men. “He was on the left flank yesterday. He marched his men through the trees to