Gwyneth Atlee Read online

  Gabriel sighed contentment in his sleep and pulled her to him, spooning her body with his own. And with the closer contact, her misgivings lifted like a haze of smoke cleared by a river breeze.

  This was home now, she realized as his arm tightened about her. Not the Augerons’ fine town house, not the Creole quarter of New Orleans, not even the South itself; those places were nothing but a past forever lost. This place—these arms, this heart, this man—meant her future. Gabriel was her home, wherever he might take her, and she knew beyond any question that she would do anything to keep him and all they would have safe.

  Even if that meant leaving him right now to send another telegram to Uncle André in St. Louis. Because now she felt more pressure than ever to clear herself of charges and implicate Darien Russell in the deaths of both her sister and Lieutenant Simonton. Because she knew without a doubt that if Russell caught her first, he’d silence not only her but Gabriel, and she could not allow that.

  Nor could she allow Gabriel to come with her. For there was always the possibility that Russell would anticipate this move, that he would be watching the telegraph office with his steady raptor’s gaze. She could only bear this risk if it were hers alone.

  Yvette had nearly finished dressing when Gabriel awakened. He reached out for her. “Come back here, Yvette.”

  That sleepy smile and the tousled hair nearly melted her resolve.

  Instead, she leaned over him and kissed his cheek.

  “Dressing with an injured arm is not so very simple, and I suspect

  that if I come too close, I’ll have to struggle through it all again.” His smile stretched into a lazy grin. “I may be a little tired, but I

  believe that I could make it worth your while.”

  She felt herself blushing at the images that his words conjured. Mon

  Dieu, but she would love nothing more than to taste his kisses one

  more time. And so much more . . .

  Wistfully, she sighed. “Gabriel . . . I will count the minutes until I

  can return. But I have a thing that I must do right now.” He sat up and reached for his pants. “Then I’ll come with you. I

  don’t want Russell catching you alone.”

  She shook her head. Despite his eagerness to bring her back to bed,

  she could not forget how near to collapsing he had seemed before.

  “You still look exhausted. Stay here, where you can eat and rest. It will

  be better, anyway, if I do this thing alone.”

  “What thing?”

  She shook her head. “I have to send a message to the one person

  who might make it possible for us to stay together.”

  “Your uncle?”

  She nodded. “It would be better if I tell you the details later.” She bent to kiss his forehead and fought the temptation to linger

  and then drop her lips to his. Not now, she warned herself. First she

  must protect him from the consequences of her past.

  “Please, Gabriel, just trust me. I will come back very soon,” she

  promised.

  He nodded. “All right, Yvette, but please . . . be careful and

  be quick.”

  * * *

  When Patterson sighed and handed Darien the address, Russell could scarcely believe his luck.

  “I’m being unrealistic,” the colonel told him. “Much as I’d like to come along, the general will send me to the godforsaken Indian Territory if I don’t attend another pressing matter this afternoon. Report back later this afternoon to apprise me of the situation. Oh, and perhaps you’ll want to take this with you.”

  Patterson passed him his own revolver. “It’s been fairly quiet here, but since the president’s death, we’re afraid there may be pockets of insurrection. Besides, this girl you’re after has already shown what she can do. I suppose I don’t need to remind you not to go too easy on her just because she’s female. We’ve had our own problems with vipers in petticoats hereabouts. Not killers, perhaps, but the most treacherous spies I’ve ever seen. One of them was engaged to half a dozen Union officers throughout the occupation. I’m still trying to undo some of the disruptions she caused.”

  “Don’t worry,” Darien assured him. “I have no intention of proposing to Miss Augeron or of turning my back on her for a second. Have a good afternoon, sir.”

  Feeling jubilant, Darien saluted the officer as he hurried back inside the appropriated mansion. He then turned back toward the two soldiers and held up the address.

  “This could easily be another woman passenger,” he said in an almost dismissive tone. “It wouldn’t do to harass an innocent survivor. I’ll check with the owner of this boardinghouse. I’d like both of you to go to the rail and steamboat ticket offices. I don’t want those two getting out of Memphis. Why don’t you see if you can get mounts to speed this up a bit?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Predictably, only the younger soldier spoke. If this new order surprised him, he didn’t show it.

  Darien was too eager to leave the two to bother chastising the mute man. Instead, as soon as the gray-eyed man directed him toward Beale, he dismissed both men and climbed into the shay. With barely a flick of the reins, the bay mare started off at a smart trot.

  As he drove, a warm breeze carried the scent of river through a host of bright spring blossoms. Darien sneezed and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his running nose and eyes. Despite the blue sky and sunny weather, he despised this time of year.

  In tribute to either the brilliant day or Memphis’s thriving commerce, the streets were crowded with pedestrians, riders, carriages, and wagons loaded with merchandise. Far too crowded to allow the energetic mare a needed canter. As if to protest, she strained against the lines and threw her feet out in an animated gait. Russell smiled, enjoying the challenge of handling the spirited horse after years spent flogging half-dead army hacks into sluggish trots.

  He wondered if this fine animal and the little shay, too, had been confiscated from the owners of the house Patterson had taken. For no reason in particular, he thought back to the abandoned doll beneath the bed where he had slept, then shrugged off an unexpected twinge of pity.

  When he reached the Beacon residence, a short, plump woman answered the door. She wiped her floury hands on her apron.

  “Yes?” she asked, eyeing his uniform with what appeared to be suspicion.

  Surely she didn’t imagine he’d come to requisition this hovel for military use. He only took advantage of the greed of men already rich; he had no intention of stealing from children and old ladies. Intent on getting information quickly, he managed what he hoped passed for a charming smile to put her mind at ease.

  “Good afternoon, madam,” he told her. “I’ve just learned that a dear friend of the family, Mrs. Caroline Edwards, was rescued from the river and is staying here. I would so like to speak with her and offer my assistance.”

  The woman’s expression warmed immediately, and she returned his smile with a far more genuine version.

  “You’ll be so glad to know her husband’s turned up safe, too,” she volunteered. “Poor young man has his hands all bandaged, and he looks plenty tired, but I declare he’ll be just fine. He’s upstairs resting right this very minute.”

  Gabe Davis had found her then, and quickly, too, Darien thought. And the two of them were posing as man and wife. He smiled, thinking of this chink in Yvette’s armor of Southern feminine morality. She was repaying the soldier for his help in the very coin he had imagined.

  “And what of Mrs. Edwards?” he asked. “Is she resting upstairs as well?”

  “Oh, no. I’m afraid that you just missed her. She left about ten minutes ago to run an errand,” Widow Beacon said, pointing out the direction. “If you hurry, though, you might just catch her.”

  This time, his smile was genuine. “Thank you so much for your time, madam. I believe I’ll do that.”

  Fifteen

&
nbsp; War is at best barbarism. . . . Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is Hell.

  —William Tecumseh Sherman

  Gabe ate several of the sweet rolls and drank another cup of the cool tea. If his brain hadn’t been so fogged with sleep, he would have insisted upon going with Yvette.

  How long had she been gone? The small room held no clock, and in this unfamiliar place, the shift of shadows offered him few clues. He peered out once more through a spotless window and glanced up toward the sun. Noon, he reckoned, or not long after. But that didn’t help him, since he wasn’t sure when she had left.

  If only he hadn’t dozed once she had gone. Then he’d have a better idea of the time. But his physical condition and contentment had conspired to chase him back to sleep, beyond the worries that now gnawed at his conscience.

  As soon as she returned, he would have to go out looking for his three friends. Though he’d searched his copy of the newspaper again and again, none of their names had been listed among the known survivors in the Argus.

  But he had seen names he knew. He was relieved to read of several men he knew from Andersonville who had been taken to various area hospitals. Several men from his Ohio unit were also listed, and though they’d turned their backs on him, Gabe was glad to think they would be going home, at least if they survived whatever injuries they’d sustained.

  But Silas Deming’s name appeared on the roster of men sent to Overton Hospital. It seemed painfully unfair—incomprehensible— that such a worthless bastard would come through this when Gabe’s best friends were missing. Even Reuben Miller, his boyhood friend, had not yet been found.

  Gabe’s mind returned to the grim rows of shrouded bodies lined up along the river. Rows that would only lengthen as more corpses floated to the surface or jammed into the blades of paddle wheels. Dear God.

  He mustn’t think of that. Must think instead of Yvette and what had passed between them. Must put aside the guilt that he had lived to experience such joy, while Jacob, Zeke, and Seth—

  No! His friends could not be dead! He pictured them, one face after the other. He heard their voices, thought of the times they’d taken turns huddling two by two in the shebang during a cold rain because all four of them could not fit inside the crude, homemade shelter at one time.

  A shelter made out of three sticks and a single rubber Union army blanket, a treasure Captain Seth had been fortunate enough to smuggle inside the stockade.

  Gabe stood, suddenly all nervous energy, and began to pace the little room. He noticed the corner of a paper sticking out from beneath a blotter on the desk. Curious, he pulled it out and scanned the first few lines.

  My dearest Marie,

  My Yankee soldier, my dear Gabriel, is gone now, and all I can do is wonder. Was he taken from me to repay in part the lives that I destroyed?

  He stopped reading, conscious only of the sharpness of his shock and of the many things he didn’t really know about the woman he had promised he would wed. If her sister, Marie, were really dead, why would Yvette be writing her a letter? And worse yet, what did she mean by “. . . to repay in part the lives that I destroyed?”

  Nausea churned deep in his belly, and cold chills sped along his spine. Dropping the letter facedown on the desk, he turned away.

  Yvette. He could almost feel her, taste her tenderness. But when he heard her voice whisper his name, it echoed with the South. The South that he had fought against. The South his friends detested. And all at once the love he felt for her welled as bitter as betrayal in his heart.

  “Your loyalty is misplaced,” Darien Russell had told him this morning. “. . . she’s a criminal. A murderess, in fact. There’s even talk she might have been part of a conspiracy that caused the explosion.”

  Stupid to listen to anything that arrogant bastard said, but despite the thought, a memory crept back into Gabe’s consciousness. Yvette had met him on the main deck near the boilers, though her stateroom was located on the cabin deck above.

  Near the boilers, which had exploded just a few days later.

  He thought, too, of Yvette’s desperation to leave the Sultana when she’d docked in Memphis. If not for Russell’s vigilance, she surely would have gone. Leaving him behind, abandoning all who were aboard the doomed vessel.

  Gabe thought about what she had said to him today. Why didn’t she want him to come along with her?

  Please, Gabriel, just trust me. He could almost hear her words. And he wondered, Was it possible he’d trusted her too far?

  * * *

  Despite his appreciation for the bay mare’s exuberance, she nearly caused Darien Russell to miss the very reason he had come. Only fifty yards from the telegraph office, their path was blocked by a wagon with a broken axle and a pair of lowing oxen. For whatever reason, the mare had taken exception to the scene and shied, rearing on her hind legs in fright. Darien only regained control in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of the back of Yvette Augeron as she entered a neat, white-painted building. He swore after reading the sign above the door: Memphis Telegraph Office. God damn it. Who the hell could she be contacting?

  The thought sent a shudder through him, and the mare danced within her traces as if his apprehension were contagious. He settled the horse and then tied her to a hitching post a few doors down, in front of a general store.

  He’d prefer to take Yvette before she sent her message but decided it would be preferable to avoid a public scene. People remembered such things all too clearly, and with what he had in mind, witnesses would cause unpleasant complications.

  Instead, he decided to wait until she finished and began walking through an area less crowded. He stepped inside the general store and hurriedly looked around for the one item he would need to put an end to all his troubles.

  “Excuse me,” he called to a clerk, a reed-thin boy with jutting ears. “I’ll need to buy a good, strong rope.”

  * * *

  Gabriel walked along the shaded avenue, as miserable as he’d ever been inside Andersonville prison, as uncertain as he’d been his entire life. Had he betrayed his country by helping Yvette? Had he betrayed his friends by loving her as well?

  Once again memories assailed him. Seth Harris told him once more, “Think logically. Or if you can’t do that, think about that beefsteak you keep dreaming on and not some girl with every reason in the world to hate you.”

  Zeke had laughed, “I hear you’re courtin’ trouble.”

  But the words that kept coming back to him were Jacob Fuller’s: “Do you realize you’re taking this Southern girl’s word against a Union officer’s? She’s a goddamned Rebel, Gabe. The whole idea stinks of treason. How can you be sure of anything she said?”

  And now all three of them were missing, as well as others beyond counting. Could it have anything to do with the fact that he’d helped her?

  Maybe Silas Deming and his friends had been wrong about him all along, Gabe thought. Maybe what he’d been guilty of had not been cowardice but something worse instead.

  Disloyalty. To his friends, to his country, and to everything he’d fought for. To everything held dear enough to take another’s life.

  There was no undoing what he’d done to help Yvette, and there was nothing in the world he could do to set things right. Except to see to it that she was punished if he truly believed she’d lied to him.

  At the thought of Yvette, his mind leapt to the soft expression in her eyes as he had loved her, to the streak of red she’d left upon the sheets. She had trusted him enough to let him be the first, trusted him with her most precious gift outside the bonds of marriage.

  Why? Why would she do such a thing if she were no more than a spy, if she were guilty of complicity in an act that had killed well over a thousand?

  His mind flashed once again to Yvette down on the main deck, challenging a group of Yankee prisoners because she th
ought it wrong to throw a helpless man to his death in the water. For the first time, he realized the enormity of the risk that she had taken, the simple moral courage required for such an act.

  And in that moment his doubts vanished, because he knew who she was. Not a murderess, not a spy, just the scared and lonely young woman that he knew her to be. One who loved him with all her heart.

  As he truly loved her.

  Gabe smiled, feeling energized by the conviction and by the realization that his heart was loyal, after all.

  * * *

  Yvette glanced up and down the street as she left the telegraph office. Seeing no familiar faces, she began walking in the same direction she had come, her mind on anything but danger.

  She felt relieved now that the telegram was on its way to Uncle André. Surely he’d reply soon, perhaps in as little as half a day, with instructions on what she should do next. He might even travel here to meet her. Then she, Uncle André, and Gabriel would soon figure out how to unknot this tangled skein of troubles. Darien would be punished, and she could marry Gabriel.

  Thinking of her lover, Yvette turned her face toward the sunshine. She shivered delicately in the warm spring air as she remembered all they’d shared. And would share, from this day forth. Echoes of their kisses and forbidden touches, of their whispered words of love, lightened her steps until she felt buoyant as cork upon the water, carried toward him on a welcome tide.

  So complete was her distraction that the first thing that she heard was the gun’s click at her back. Something small and very hard poked painfully beneath her shoulder blade.

  “Move a muscle and I’ll shoot you through the heart.” She froze, not needing to turn her head to recognize the voice of the

  man who had used and then murdered her sister. Darien Russell’s voice had so long hissed threats in her nightmares that she prayed desperately that this might number among those frightening dreams.

  Around her, however, she heard the everyday sounds of voices, none very close or sounding of alarm. She smelled the ordinary odors of horse manure and damp earth laid over the familiar scent of river. Though the sun shone brightly, a cooler breeze stole through the alleyway that she was crossing and raised the fine hairs of her arms and nape. This was all too real, she reasoned, the reckoning that she had dreaded for so long.