Gwyneth Atlee Read online

  “You found me,” she whispered, resenting that it had to come at such a happy moment, when the future looked so promising.

  “Simple enough,” Darien told her flatly, “once your lover told me where you’d gone.”

  She flinched as if he’d struck her, then managed to steel herself with indignation. “Liar! Gabriel would never tell you anything!” she hissed.

  He prodded her back with what must surely be a gun barrel. “Now get inside the shay, and don’t think for a moment that anyone will care if I shoot a Southern spy and murderess.”

  Slowly, Yvette turned and began walking in the direction that he indicated.

  Darien chuckled, clearly relishing this opportunity to cause her pain. “After all was said and done, Mr. Davis realized he hadn’t fought and suffered only to betray the Union for a tryst. I dare say, he seemed relieved to wash his hands of the whole, sordid affair.”

  She wasn’t going to cry, Yvette swore. Surely Russell was lying to be cruel.

  But she couldn’t let him think that she believed him. “I don’t believe a word of it,” she protested. “He—”

  “Loves you? Is that what he told you? Oh, dear, Yvette. I’m shocked that with your upbringing and intelligence, you couldn’t guess that he was only talking his way between your legs. After all, the man spent months in a prison camp and years before that in the field. God knows how long he’s been without a woman. One can hardly blame him for—”

  “Stop it!” she demanded, even as he helped her up into the shay. She noticed he’d put up the folding hood for privacy.

  Despite her resolve, tears swam in her vision, then began to spill. Hating the show of weakness, she angrily swiped at them with a sleeve.

  As Darien climbed inside and took up the reins, the horse started, and he had to struggle to control it. Yvette thought of running, but her limbs were shaking too hard, and the moment was too brief. Her mind spun with other explanations for Darien Russell’s presence. He might have followed her or posted guards to watch the telegraphs and stations. Or perhaps he’d discerned her false identity, then tracked down Mrs. Beacon.

  But the older woman hadn’t known where she was going. She’d told no one else but Gabriel that bit of information. Still, she clung desperately to the conviction that he wouldn’t do this, not after—

  All Maman’s and her grandmère’s harshest warnings came roaring into consciousness, thundering in horrible, discordant crescendos. “A woman dishonored can never be a wife or mother, only a debased, pathetic creature of the streets.” And, “No matter what he promises, you must not give in, for a man’s youthful ardor is only a test of your true virtue.”

  A test that she had failed, along with so many others. From the moment that she’d tried to save her sister, she’d forgotten every single thing she had been taught. Why hadn’t she taken her suspicions to her father or her brothers and allowed the men to handle these matters, as any decent Creole woman would have?

  Even as she thought it, she remembered how she’d tried with Papa, how he’d forbidden her to speak of it to anyone. Still, convinced of her own rightness and the danger to her sister, she had disobeyed.

  And it had ended in disaster. Marie had been disgraced and murdered, and now, for all her struggles, she would suffer the same fate.

  All that she had left to hope for was that she might somehow lash out at Darien Russell in these final moments that must certainly lead up to her death.

  * * *

  Worry quickened Gabe’s steps, and a growing pressure swelled inside his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe. Perhaps, he tried to tell himself, Yvette had taken a different route. Right now she awaited him in her room, just as worried as he was. Or maybe the line at the telegraph office had been clogged with Sultana survivors eager to contact home with news of their escape or pleas for assistance. Yet neither of those scenarios slowed his progress, for he couldn’t escape the need to see her, touch her, and reassure himself that all was well.

  He wondered if his urgency was fed by guilt that he had doubted her and for the suspicion that still lay coiled in his mind, tempting him to wonder if she’d abandoned him.

  “Expect little; trust less.” Seth’s words again returned to haunt him, and he could almost see the man’s gray eyes behind the cracked lens of his glasses. How was it he’d never noticed how grim was his friend’s expression? He wondered if somewhere, somehow, Seth would ever move beyond his prison walls.

  Gabe hurried on, knowing he’d rather learn that he was wrong, have Yvette Augeron make a fool of him, than live without the possibility of trust, without the possibility of love. He’d be damned if he would let doubt ruin what he’d found with her.

  He longed to somehow repay Yvette for his lack of faith, to show her his commitment to forever. If he could only find her.

  Inside the telegraph office, he found only a man with unlined, milk-pale skin and snowy, shoulder-length hair. The clerk’s eyes, framed by white lashes, peered out from thick glasses that magnified their blueness into a pair of icy lakes.

  The lakes blinked several times until Gabe closed the door and shut out the afternoon’s bright sunlight. The window shades were drawn, and it took several moments for his own eyes to adjust to the new dimness.

  “Would you care to send a telegram?” the clerk asked.

  “No, thanks. I’m looking for my wife,” Gabe ventured, sticking with Yvette’s story. “Have you seen her? She’s a small-boned woman, about twenty, with dark hair.”

  The clerk nodded and gestured toward the door. “She sent her telegram and left not two minutes ago. She couldn’t have gotten too far.”

  Gabe thanked him, although he wondered if the fellow could really see well enough to identify Yvette or anyone else. He’d never in his life seen anyone wearing thicker glasses.

  Once outside, Gabe trotted up and down the street in the hopes that he might catch a glimpse of Yvette’s retreating form. As he passed an alley, he was nearly overrun by a lively bay horse pulling a shay as it emerged from between two buildings. Turning his head to shout a warning at the driver, Gabe froze in horror and swallowed back his words.

  Darien Russell held the driving lines in one hand. And beside him, her face nearly as pale as the albino’s, sat Yvette. Russell was glaring at her, saying something, so that his gaze never settled upon Gabe. Yvette, too, gave no sign of recognition.

  The horse and shay completed its turn and began to pull away. Gabe hesitated, wondering how on earth Russell had convinced Yvette to go with him without a fight.

  He had to have a gun. Perhaps that would explain why only one hand held the bay’s reins.

  As the two-wheeled carriage began to pull away, Gabe wondered how, using only his brain and his two injured hands, he could hope to stop Captain Russell, an armed officer who would hide behind the law to break it. How in God’s name could he save Yvette without costing both of them their lives?

  * * *

  Yvette didn’t have the heart to ask where Russell was taking her. Instead, she sat in silence as they drove past building after building: churches and hotels, grand homes and lesser ones, businesses of every ilk. She barely recognized the people that they passed as human, whether soldier or civilian, man or woman, light-skinned or dark. It never occurred to her to call out to any of them or that anyone would either hear her screams or try to help.

  Her mind spun like a wagon wheel seeking purchase in slick mud. Try as she might, she couldn’t pull herself out of the hole in which she’d been mired.

  Gabriel could not have been the one who had betrayed her. Again and again, she whispered those words to herself, then prayed desperate prayers to God. After what she and Gabriel had shared, such treachery was unimaginable, obscene.

  And yet her thoughts turned time after time to Marie’s example of what happened to a Creole girl when she entrusted both her heart and body to a Yankee soldier. Why in the name of all the saints had she refused to heed that lesson?

  * * *<
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  If the army caught him, Gabe doubted they would bother with a prison term. Yet as he watched the soldier tie a rangy black gelding to the telegraph-office hitching post, he wondered how much any of that mattered. After all, as far as he knew, they could only hang him once.

  He forced himself to wait for what he judged half a minute, though his body tensed like a drawn bowstring, ready to launch him in the direction that Yvette’s carriage had vanished. He glanced once more at the storefront windows and thanked God for its lowered shades. Praying that the soldier would stay inside awhile, Gabe untied the horse. He scrambled aboard its military saddle, though pain in his hands shot up to his shoulders. More mindful of his fear than the discomfort, he dug his heels into the animal’s sides and urged it to cut between two passing freight wagons.

  As if it understood his need, Gabe’s new mount hesitated not a moment. Instead, with near-perfect equine grace and speed, the black horse negotiated tight spaces until their flight drew several curses from startled teamsters. Pedestrians pointed, and a broad-hipped woman shouted, shaking a hammy fist at this disruption of the peace.

  Yet no one cried out, “Horse thief!” At least not anyone Gabe heard. But his relief was short-lived for two reasons. First, he had not the slightest idea how he might rescue Yvette from Darien. Second, and far worse, he could not see the black shay even when he followed the turn that he had thought Russell had taken.

  What could he do now? Surely, if he remained near, circling the area, he would be caught and arrested for the horse’s theft. But that outcome scarcely mattered, for if he could not find—and save— Yvette, he could not imagine living, anyway.

  * * *

  Yvette began to notice how thickening clouds had dimmed the sunshine, how huge trees replaced the buildings and undergrowth the people. Abruptly, the dark haze of her shock lifted, and her body shook with the strain of attempting to reckon how long the bay mare had been trotting. How many miles had they come? But try as she might, she had no way of guessing where they’d gone or where Darien Russell might be driving. No way except to ask him, which she could not, would not, do.

  Besides, their location mattered little, only the marrow-freezing fact that, just as she’d suspected, Darien had no intention of allowing her even the slim chance the courts would offer to a Southern “traitor.” He could ill afford the possibility that some softhearted judge would look at her and think of his own daughter, then allow her a few words. Words that would damn Darien, if she only had the chance.

  Instead, Russell meant to silence her, using the same methods as he had her sister. And she, acting like a docile little fool, was going right along with him without raising a fuss, as if she believed the threat of being shot were worse than whatever death he had in mind.

  To the devil with that idea! If he meant to murder her, she was going to make the cad work for it! She’d never lived as the dutiful and lamblike woman-child, so why should she fit in that mold as she died? And if revenge against Capt. Darien Russell were not reason enough to fight him to the death, she thought of all the venom she would like to spew at Gabriel, who would repay her gift of love with this betrayal. If she had to claw and bite her way through Darien like a tigress for the chance to have her say, then so be it! It certainly wasn’t as if she any longer had a genteel reputation to protect.

  “Use your mind, Yvette.” The voice sent a clean jolt along the column of her spine. Marie’s voice, so clear and true that all the tiny hairs along her arms and nape rose in recognition and her stomach leapt into her throat.

  Mon Dieu! She must be dying, to hear words spoken by the dead! Her quivering redoubled, and she thought that she must vomit. Yet as she bent forward, she recalled the strange story Gabriel had told her, about seeing his dead brother on the battlefield. Gabriel Davis had not died that day.

  Neither would she perish. Perhaps, like her lover’s brother, Marie had returned when death loomed near, intent only on coaxing her out of its path. “Use your mind,” she’d said. And suddenly Yvette could see Marie’s last moments, how, finally understanding, she had fought with all her strength. And how futile, how completely useless, that final effort had proved.

  Like her sister, Yvette lacked the strength to physically overpower Darien Russell. But she’d already outwitted him on more than one occasion.

  If she tried to leap out of the carriage now or wrestle away his weapon, he would only shoot her. Along this empty pathway, with no one as a witness. But if her strength could not stop a bullet, how could she manage that same feat with her mind?

  Marie whispered no more words of advice. Perhaps she hovered nearby, silently encouraging her sister. Or maybe she had been no more than a trick of the mind, a manifestation of the human will to live.

  It scarcely mattered to Yvette, who slumped even farther forward. Though she had no real plan yet, she decided that feigning weakness would put Darien off his guard. Her furious thinking halted even as the horse did.

  Russell made fast the driving lines, then gently touched her cheek, as if to offer comfort. Yvette flinched at the contact.

  “I’m sorry to see you’re feeling poorly,” he told her. The jubilation had faded from his voice, faded into what sounded for all the world like sympathy, or even sorrow.

  Was he sorry for her or for himself and what he meant to do? Did a man who had already murdered still fear earning an even hotter place in hell? Or was there something else that troubled him, something she might use?

  Marie’s features flashed through her mind like summer lightning, and Yvette decided on the chance that she would take.

  She glanced up at Russell through lashes thickened by the droplets of her tears. “Marie comes to you, too.” She spoke without the slightest hint of hesitation, surprised that her voice would not betray her mind’s doubt. “She comes to you and damns you for her murder and the death of your own child.”

  The hand that gripped her upper arm closed tight enough to make her cry out in both pain and surprise.

  “I didn’t kill them. You did!” he accused her.

  “Why not let a court decide? Why not let them hang me for all of New Orleans to see? You know that would destroy my family . . . or what’s left of my family, I should say.”

  “You want a trial?” he raged, pausing for a moment to tighten his left hand’s grip on the reins, which had come loose when the horse had started at his outburst. He braked the shay and retied the reins, then shoved the pistol’s muzzle up beneath her chin. “Then by all means, let’s have one!”

  She leaned backward in the seat and tilted her head to escape the weapon’s painful pressure. But her shifting made no difference, as he pushed even harder than before.

  “Who in God’s name tried to run me out of New Orleans with her spiteful little ditties?” he shouted. Then, answering his own question, he said, “Miss Yvette Augeron!”

  Without allowing her a chance for a reply, he continued. “Who spied on me from dawn to dusk and stole my property?”

  Twisting away, Yvette argued. “If you’re speaking of that letter, you must know it was destroyed before I could prove anything. There’s no need to kill—”

  “Silence!” He punctuated that command by clubbing the side of her head with the pistol.

  Yvette’s world careened amid a sickening jolt of pain. Blackness threatened to drop down like a curtain, but she fought it and struggled to make sense of Russell’s words.

  “And who told Lieutenant Simonton about that letter and showed it to Marie—Marie! God, how I loved her, and yet you, you goddamned interfering bitch, you made me—”

  The accusation was too much for Yvette, and with all of her remaining strength she slashed at his eyes with her nails. She felt them dig deep into the beard-coarsened flesh of his cheek, heard him shout out some obscenity, just before he grabbed her and began to shake.

  And as her head struck the shay’s side, her tenuous grip on consciousness melted into darkness.

  * * *

  Both
boys bobbed their heads and peered down the road, along a pathway that cut through virgin forest. Neither pointed to indicate the answer to Gabe’s question, for their arms were loaded with firewood. Dirt filmed their dark brown skin, and Gabe imagined they were contrabands, former slaves who had flocked to Union-held territory to guarantee their freedom.

  “They just come along this way, white folks in a two-wheel carriage with a brown hoss,” the older of the two said.

  As Gabe glanced in the direction Russell and Yvette had taken, he thought he could make out a haze of dust, still airborne after the passage of the horse and shay. He thanked the boys and kicked his stolen mount into a gallop, more alarmed now than ever.

  It had been bad enough when he’d imagined Russell taking Yvette to a jail cell to face trial, but with each step the two took beyond Memphis, Gabe’s apprehension grew. This journey into the isolated woodlands could only mean one thing. Yvette was dangerous to Russell, too threatening to live to speak her piece. The captain intended for her only execution, not a trial.

  * * *

  Yvette’s head throbbed in time to the pounding of her heart. She began to rouse, conscious only of the imperative to awaken, not the reason.

  Her eyes slitted open just enough to see him. Darien Russell, bending forward, his hands working at a strange knot in a long, looped rope.

  Something about the knot alarmed her almost as much as the presence of her sister’s killer. Something about the snakelike way it coiled about itself, completely unlike the knots she’d seen on riverboats or the ones her brothers used to tie the horses.

  Russell slid his hand into the loop, then pulled against it. She watched in horror as the rope drew tight around his wrist. And then she knew for certain why this knot had filled her with such horror. The only place she’d ever seen it had been on a hangman’s noose.