Gwyneth Atlee Page 13

  —Mary Chesnut,

  A Diary from Dixie

  As Capt. Darien Russell stood near the steamboat’s gangway, he made no attempt to halt the exodus of former prisoners from the Sultana. Instead, he watched with a mixture of fascination and disgust as the dregs of the Union army loped or limped, depending on their condition, onto the wharf boat and then the cobblestones beyond it. No order at all to them, he noted, except to disobey.

  He was glad he had decided to do nothing to stop the departing men. In their minds, they were no longer military, as if in the wake of Lee’s surrender all obligations had dissolved. They would have certainly ignored his orders, just as they had ignored the orders of more familiar leaders. Some might have mocked him, and at his current level of frustration, he scarcely trusted himself to keep his temper reined.

  His temper. It had always been his loaded gun and mockery its surest trigger. As the hours crept by, he thought of how it had caused his academy to fail. Although he’d loved to lecture, he could never handle boys. Remembering their sniggers still made his hands fist into hammers, his hands, which had not learned from the fateful blow they dealt to William Charles.

  Certainly, he’d boxed boys’ ears before—and often. But when he’d caught Will mimicking his lecture in the corridor in tones so pompous and speech so flowery, when he’d heard the others howl with mirth, Darien—quite literally—saw red. A bloody veil of rage obscured both his vision and his reason, and before he could regain control, his fists pummeled the boy, again and again.

  That time there had been no neat precision; there had been blood. Blood streaming from the boy’s ears as William lay unconscious on his classroom floor. The other boys stood motionless, mute with disbelief and horror. It was only by the grace of God the child didn’t die. But he would never hear again from his left ear, the one that Darien’s right fist had struck.

  Darien’s temper had cost him his school in the end, along with every penny he’d ever sunk into it. Every last cent of his inheritance. William’s parents had accepted an apology and a modest settlement in lieu of filing any criminal or civil charges. But when they withdrew their son, others followed, many others, until Darien had no choice but to close his academy. Close it and forever afterward listen to his wife harangue him for his failure.

  Even in the military his temper hobbled him. He could no more abide the laughter of men than boys, and his harsh brand of discipline inspired muttering far more often than heroics. His superiors explained he had no gift for leadership. A man of his intelligence and background might well be a colonel by this time, or even a general. But Darien instead was a captain serving generals, seeing that their food was hot, even on the battlefield, and that their orders were delivered. In other words, despite his rank and education, despite the grandness of his ideas, he functioned as a lackey.

  Until New Orleans taught him to use the role to his advantage. Until he saw how others prospered and decided to drink from the same well. He felt a surge of pride at the thought of how he had manipulated wealthy men so deftly. So deftly that the last one handed him his lovely daughter as if she were a bright bow atop the gift of the man’s fortune. And if, at the end, he hadn’t quite succeeded in separating old Augeron from his wealth, he had at least enjoyed despoiling Marie and the heady feelings of deception and revenge upon his harpy of a wife.

  Darien smiled, thinking of his brilliance. It helped to pass the time far more agreeably than dwelling on his failures. He’d leave this war a very rich man, never again to fear his Constance—or the noose. All he had to do was silence Yvette Augeron, to make certain she never left this steamboat.

  At least not without him.

  * * *

  Jacob decided to avoid the long line at the Soldiers’ Home in favor of trying to buy food elsewhere. He wandered down a seedy-looking side street near the riverfront. He’d heard someone say there was a rivermen’s saloon there, but nothing about the dilapidated wooden structures looked inviting. Jacob had just about decided to turn back when he spotted a sign hanging above the doorway of a severely leaning structure. Ma Abbot’s had been painted in crude, uneven letters, as if a child or a drunk had done the job.

  Jacob had misgivings about entering the place. Someone had used wooden props to keep the saloon from keeling over. Strips of paint peeled from weathered outer walls so full of knotholes that anyone who took the notion could easily peer inside. Neither the rectangle of dingy yellow light nor the out-of-tune piano music coming through the open door seemed inviting in the least, but Jacob Fuller was not a man to turn away from anything over a few hairs rising along the back of his neck.

  Instead, he raked his fingers through his thick curls, as if to straighten them, before striding into the saloon. The moment that he did, the odors struck him. Smoke and liquor combined with stale sweat and old grease. But something more enticing overpowered those unpleasant scents, something that smelled of baking bread and maybe onions. His stomach rumbled, oblivious to the suspicious, dark-eyed gazes of the trio of rough-looking men standing by the bar. In a corner, another pair stopped laughing at his entrance. Only the piano player, who had his back turned to the door, continued as he had been, plinking out a badly played rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

  Jacob approached the bar. A hooknosed man stood behind it, gazing at him over the paunch of an enormous belly. Unlike the patrons, his smile offered welcome.

  “Whatcha have to drink, soldier?”

  “I’m more interested in food right now. What’s that I smell cooking?” The smile stretched into a grin. “My wife—Ma’s—cookin’ meat

  pies. I swear she keeps the place in business. Can I sell you one?”

  Instead, the bartender sold him a sack of meat pies and a half-full jar of pickled eggs. But when Jacob dug into his small cache of coins, he sensed eyes devouring his every movement, eyes that hungered for money more than food.

  Four soldiers from the Sultana burst in noisily, all shouting orders for whiskey. One was an enormously tall fellow that Jacob had seen aboard the steamer. This close, he reckoned the fellow might be seven feet tall.

  Happy for the distraction, Jacob took his leave. But as he did so, out of the corner of his eye he saw the three men who’d been standing at the bar walk out behind him. The same three men who’d been watching him so carefully when he’d paid for the food.

  It would be a long walk back to the Sultana, Jacob realized. A long, dark walk alone.

  * * *

  Gabriel and Yvette stood in shadow in a spot on the main deck that had been vacated by a group of men who’d gone into Memphis. Yvette took Gabe’s hand and squeezed it, sending a brief but powerful current of desire through his entire body. A current he could no longer ignore. She meant to leave him now, forever. He did not delude himself into thinking that, once parted, he’d ever again find her.

  Apparently, she was thinking along different lines, for she released his hand to point out Captain Russell ahead of them. He stood watching the gangway, his back to them, his posture rigidly alert.

  “Maybe he’ll give up soon,” Yvette wished aloud. In her borrowed outfit, she looked like a drummer boy. But only if she stayed out of the light, where her delicate features and the sweet curves of her body would not give her away.

  “I hope . . .” Gabe began, not knowing how to voice his thoughts without angering her. But the passing moments beat away at him like eagles’ wings. There was no time to woo her gently, to gradually chip away at her resistance. No time to waste on doubts. If he wanted her, he’d have to say so now, while there was still some fragment of a chance.

  “Got no use for a goddamn coward,” Silas Deming’s voice reminded him. Deming had been wrong when he’d said it, but now the statement urged Gabe into action. His heart told him that if he listened to the voice of fear instead, or even to Seth Harris’s voice of reason, he would regret it to the end of his days. That his body might yet inhabit the earth, but the last vestige of his wounded soul would d
ie a slow death of self-loathing.

  So he risked putting into words what he’d been thinking. “I hope he doesn’t leave.”

  Yvette glared at him. “Do you want me to get caught? After all you’ve done to help me?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s, well . . . I want you, Yvette. If I had time, I’d do this right. I’d court you slow and proper, like the lady that you are. But you’re about to leave now, leave for somewhere I can’t help you. About to go where I can’t ever hope to hold you in my arms again.”

  Her eyes rounded, and she blinked rapidly. Perhaps she blinked back tears, but in the poor light, he could not be certain.

  “You feel it, too, don’t you?” he asked her. “There’s something strong between us, something we might never feel again. I could love you, Yvette. No, I may as well risk everything and tell you, I do love you—now. I love the way you fit against my body. I love the way you listen and you talk. I love the way you take a stand, whether it’s against a thieving officer or against a bunch of soldiers about to kill an unconscious enemy. You put what you believe on the line, the same way the best soldiers have, on both sides of this war. I don’t only love you, I respect you for it, and that’s a combination you don’t come by every day.”

  He paused and took a breath. God, how he wished she’d say something in response that would stop him from making a damned fool of himself. But as the seconds stretched into a brittle silence, he decided that having gone so far, he had little else to lose.

  “Don’t go, Yvette. Come with me, to Ohio. I don’t intend to stay there. I mean to start a new life afterwards, in Oregon, where Union and Confederacy are just words from the papers, where a man’s skill is as good as money in the bank. It’ll be rough going for a while, but I mean to make a living forging metal, anything but cannon. I won’t take a damned dime on tools made to kill men.”

  “Gabe,” she breathed, “what are you saying?”

  “I’m asking you to make a new start, as my wife.”

  “Your wife . . . ?” The words were choked, the voice tight. “No one has ever . . . ever made me feel so . . .”

  When words failed her, she put down the basket that contained Lafitte. Rising, she then draped her arms around his neck and leaned into his embrace. Gabe felt such joy, such expanding relief, that he did not hesitate to enfold her in a kiss so genuine, so generous, that it made his body ache with need.

  Yvette’s cap slid off, and her dark waves cascaded nearly to her waist. Coming to his senses, Gabe broke away to retrieve the kepi and hand it back to her.

  “We can’t do that again,” he warned as she tucked her hair back into hiding. He grimaced at the thought of what might happen if he were seen kissing what appeared to be a drummer boy. They’d both be catfish bait for certain.

  “No . . . we can’t,” Yvette said, and from the sadness in her voice, he knew she meant forever, not just now.

  He had opened up his heart to her for nothing. He had played his finest hand—and lost.

  * * *

  As men unloaded a hogshead of sugar, Darien Russell heard a crewman’s voice.

  “That’s near the last of it. Blow the whistle now and give them boys a chance to get back on board afore we shove off. They’ll be wantin’ to get home, and no mistake.”

  A warning jolted him back to full awareness, an instinct that Yvette was somewhere close by, waiting for the passing hours to lull him into inattention. Waiting, perhaps, for him to give up and return to the main cabin to bed down for the night.

  He could almost hear her thinking that now would be her best chance to flee the steamer. The day had long since faded into moonless darkness, broken only by lit torches. Faces would be hard to distinguish by the dim, flickering light, although with so few women about, he didn’t think he’d have much trouble discerning her.

  Darien smoothed his hair and beard to hide his anticipation. From the looks of Yvette’s stateroom, which he’d checked before they’d tied up, she’d fled in a hurry, leaving nearly everything behind. Everything except the damning letter he suspected she still had. Surely she would try to leave before the Sultana resumed its northward journey.

  Perhaps she’d spotted him. He’d thought he was well hidden, here in the shadow of the cabin deck, but maybe she had seen him and been frightened away. He moved to the opposite side of the gangway, into another dim spot. Hopefully, she’d see only the place he had vacated and think he’d given up.

  The steamboat’s whistle cut through the sounds of conversation, of singing from somewhere on the decks above. This was her last chance then—and his last chance to catch her this evening, as he’d sworn.

  * * *

  Despite Jacob’s sense that he was being followed, their attack had still surprised him. Maybe it was only the way he had been raised, but he always felt a cold ripple of shock when someone meant—on purpose—to do him bodily harm. Someone that he didn’t even know, that he’d given no excuse whatsoever for the action. Maybe that was why the whole idea of this war had made so little sense to him. Jacob could never see the reason why so many folks would want to venture so far from their homes to hurt and kill each other.

  These thoughts spun through his head as he was coming to. Or what was left of his head, anyway. Gingerly, he touched a throbbing spot. His fingers came away coated with warm, sticky blood.

  Damn. He felt in his pockets and found the remaining coins missing. Not that there’d been many in the first place. Surely not enough to jump a man and pound him till he lost consciousness. But there you had it. What foolishness was not provoked by war was begotten out of greed, he figured.

  Cautiously, he tried to stand. His world careened crazily, tilting farther over than Ma Abbott’s saloon. He sank down on his haunches so he wouldn’t flop face first into the trash-strewn alley. That was when he noticed they’d left the sack with the meat pies. The jar of pickled eggs had rolled out of the bag and broken. Fearful of glass shards, he reluctantly decided he would have to leave the eggs behind.

  Picking up the sack with the pies, Jacob made a second attempt to regain his feet. Though his head pounded and he still felt dizzy, this time he managed to remain upright.

  He heard a blast from a steamboat’s whistle. The Sultana! Was it leaving him in Memphis? He hoped like hell that he was wrong.

  As quickly as possible, Jacob shambled in the direction of the river.

  * * *

  Beyond Gabriel’s broad shoulders, stars burned themselves indelibly into Yvette’s memory. Sparkling like his diamond hopes, glittering like tears.

  She knew in that moment that she would never forget the words that he had told her. That forevermore, when she looked into the night sky, she would see them written in the constellations, blazing out of the cold depths of space beyond. And like those stars, the memory of his love would offer a bit of light amid the vastness of the emptiness that lay before her.

  But could it possibly be true? Yvette remembered laughing with her friends at the absurdity of the stories about strangers who fell helplessly in love after a single glance. Yet here she was, drawing declarations and proposals from a young man she hadn’t known three days before.

  How could it be that the impossible words she was hearing and the improbable emotions she was feeling were more real to her than all the dreamlike years she’d lived in New Orleans? Had fear and loneliness made a muddle of her senses, leaving her vulnerable to this mad spell of attraction?

  As she looked into Gabriel’s shadowed face, she could feel his nervousness, his desperation. That much, at least, was genuine. He loved her, and she began to believe she loved him, too. But that love did nothing to diminish what she felt for her family, the equal shares of pain and affection, of loyalty and pride.

  She was still an Augeron, as Marie had been. Marie, who had been killed because of the letter Yvette showed her, and by the same soulless brute that now stood watch near the gangway.

  She had sworn that she would see to it that the man
who killed Marie was punished. Even if, in doing so, she had to sacrifice the possibility of a future with Gabriel. Yet she would always love this young soldier for the offer, and so she tried to think of how to soften what she had to say.

  “A part of me wishes that I could stay with you,” she whispered. “But we both know this plan would never work. I make a poor Yankee soldier, do I not? Sooner or later, this deception must fall to pieces. And then they would arrest you, too. I cannot risk that.”

  “But Yvette—”

  She hated the pain in those two words, so she rushed to cut him off. “No, Gabriel. You mustn’t say more. Look, the captain’s left his

  post. He will go to check my stateroom, or he will go to bed. That means it is time now. Time for me to go.”

  “Then I’ll come with you,” he offered.

  “No. I will not have it. I mean to finish this with that devil Russell. I have proof of his crimes, and I am the only one. And if I fail, I fail alone. No one else must pay this time. I have already hurt too many others that I love.”

  She paused to let her final words fill the space between him, to give him time to realize she’d just said she loved him, too. Loved him but would never have him, would never press her lips to his again.

  Pain welled up, bled over from the wounds left by Marie’s death and by the loss of both her family and her home. Pain so intense that it could only spill over in her tears.

  “Yvette . . .” he told her, and her name on his lips made it seem much harder, caused her to wonder if anyone had ever said the word just so.

  She said nothing more, instead choosing that moment to turn away and hurry toward the gangway. Praying he would love her too much to call out after her. Wishing at the same time that he would risk everything to try to stop her.

  She never knew for certain what he would have done, never knew, for at that moment, Lafitte began to meow.

  * * *

  Darien would not have understood that he was looking at Yvette if not for her hesitation. While he heard the animal’s muted cry, he could not be sure of the direction. He was so intent on finding the belled outline of a skirt that he would not have noticed the boy walking toward the gangway.