Gwyneth Atlee Read online

  At the actor, William Mumford’s, execution. Yvette closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the memory of the only hanging she had ever witnessed. In the hours after federal troops took New Orleans, Mumford, Southern to his soul, tore down the Yankee flag atop the U.S. Mint. Afterward, he’d been arrested, and to everyone’s disbelief, General Butler had ordered his execution, earning himself the appellation “Beast” and the undying hatred of every citizen of New Orleans. At the time, she had been seventeen and naively convinced that the protests of the female populace could stop the outrage from occurring.

  But she was twenty now, and she had learned that evil men had a capacity for cruelty almost beyond imagination. She had learned it in that moment a good man’s weight stretched the rope.

  Darien glanced up and saw her watching.

  “I’m afraid you missed the conclusion of your trial, Yvette,” he said casually, as if he were speaking of the weather. “This court has found you guilty of the deaths of Marie Augeron and Lt. Peter Simonton. I can see by your expression that you’ve already guessed the sentence.”

  She tried to straighten, to defeat the quicksand of inertia that weighed down her limbs. He grasped her wrist almost before it began to rise and backhanded her into the darkling haze.

  “I’m coming around to get you out of here,” she heard him say, though the voice sounded faint and hollow, as if it spoke from far away. “Don’t try to run. I don’t want to have to shoot you. The proper punishment is hanging.”

  She wanted to ask what possible difference it could make, but her tongue felt as thick and clumsy as the rest of her. Besides, something had changed in Darien Russell since his days as an adulterous dissembler. Something—perhaps the murders or his own fear of punishment—had pushed him beyond the reach of rational thought, into a state as dangerous as a dog white-jawed with foam.

  Before she could guess how to react, he looped the noose around her neck and snugged the knot against her throat. Without allowing her a moment to loosen the rope, he used it to roughly drag her from the shay. If he heard her strangled cries or felt her failing limbs, he gave no sign of it.

  The pulling stopped abruptly, and Yvette lay facedown, tearing at the noose, in the dirt of a small clearing. She was barely conscious of the nervous whinnies of the horse as Russell unhitched it. All she knew was her body’s urgent need for air. The rope loosened, but she was too exhausted to lift it from her head.

  Despite her weakness, Yvette looked up at the pressure of several light tugs on the noose. Russell, holding the unhitched bay with one hand, was tossing the rope’s opposite end over the stout branch of the chestnut tree that dominated the small clearing. With sickening clarity, she realized exactly what would happen. He meant to sling the rope over the branch, then tie it to the tree’s base. Then he would pull her atop the horse and . . .

  Black spots dotted her vision, then clotted thick as blood. No! She mustn’t pass out now or she would never again awaken, would never have the chance to see Gabriel or touch him, would never have the chance for anything.

  Suddenly, her need for revenge fell away, insubstantial as a straw house in a tempest. She would gladly leave Darien’s punishment to God, would gladly turn her back on every hateful atrocity of war if she might only for a moment lie with Gabriel once more.

  She knew then, beyond all doubt, that he had not betrayed her. She wondered at her foolishness for believing that he had, even for a trice. Fresh tears overflowed at the thought of the sacred vows they’d not yet taken, the ones they’d never have the chance to speak.

  A burst of energy surged through her at the thought, and she once more fumbled to remove the frightful noose. Not to escape to fight the battles of her past but to forge a future for herself and Gabriel.

  At the tree’s thick base, Darien was struggling to tie off the rope. But the moment that he saw what she was doing, he pulled out the revolver he’d stuck in the waistband of his pants. When he cocked the weapon, its metallic clack sounded loud against the stillness.

  “God damn you! Be still!” he ordered. “I don’t want to have to shoot.”

  He didn’t, did he? Why? Did he fear someone would be attracted by the sound? Or did he truly believe this execution was something nobler than an obscene mockery of justice?

  If she ran, would he really shoot her? Or would that make this, in his mind, mere murder?

  She removed the loop and dropped it in the dirt beside her.

  “Saint Jude, pray for me,” she whispered to the patron of desperate causes. Slowly, she struggled to stand, and as she did, her voice rose in both strength and volume. “That finally I may receive the consolations and the succor of heaven in all my necessities.”

  She kept her eyes locked onto Darien’s, hoping to read hesitation in his gold-brown gaze. Dropping the rope’s end, he strode toward her, still leading the bay mare.

  She turned her back to him, guessing he was too proud to shoot an unarmed woman in the back and praying fervently that her guess was correct.

  Her body jerked at the sound of the first gunshot. But it took only an instant to realize that she had not been hit. Her teeth chattered as if a winter storm had blasted through her veins, but somehow, after a moment’s hesitation, she forced herself to walk. She didn’t run. Her legs felt too unsteady, and her heart was pounding as if it might at any moment burst. Instead, she put one foot before the other and somehow managed to propel herself at the leisurely rate of a day stroller back in the French Quarter.

  She took seven steps before he fired several more shots. This time, Yvette shrieked as a bullet creased the upper part of her left arm. She glanced down at the blood that bloomed against the sling, and in that moment’s hesitation, Darien grabbed her.

  “Turn around,” he growled.

  Her knees buckled, undone completely at his touch. She shook as if she were afflicted with a drunkard’s thirst.

  “Can’t walk,” she moaned, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t replace the noose and simply drag her.

  Instead, he picked her up as lightly as if she were made of feathers.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “You’ll never have to use your feet again.”

  * * *

  Gabe could not be certain of the sound. Pulling the black horse to a stop, he paused. His heartbeat thundered in his chest as he wondered: Had he heard gunfire in the distance?

  The gelding breathed heavily, tired from its gallop. Gabe strained his ears for several seconds, then decided the noise must have been his mount’s hoof striking a stone.

  A split second before he urged the horse to resume his gallop, a short series of shots echoed through the wood. His heart lurched, and he prayed he was mistaken. He prayed to God Yvette still lived.

  “Hyah!” he shouted at the black horse.

  The animal responded with a surprising burst of speed. But not even the fastest horse in all creation could outrun the sounds that Gabe had heard.

  Sixteen

  After all their suffering in Southern prisons, getting safely within our lines, on our route homeward, congratulating ourselves on the good news and the time we were to have at home, all this, and to have this terrible calamity, hurling so many into eternity, it makes me shudder as I write. No tongue can tell or pen describe the suffering that was on the boat on the morning of the 27th.

  —survivor Arthur A. Jones,

  from a letter to his brother

  He hung her from a chestnut tree, inside a beam of light that slanted through the gathering clouds. After Darien hoisted her onto the horse’s back, he looped the noose around Yvette’s neck again. But the mare rolled its eyes toward the snakelike rope and bolted. Before Darien realized what was happening, he saw Yvette suspended, dangling in the air.

  Wiping his own blood from his cheek, he watched her writhing, strangling. Like Major Stolz’s executioner, he’d done a poor job positioning the knot. Like Marie, Yvette’s death would be a painfully slow process.

  Thinking of Marie, Darien turned a
way, for watching Yvette’s struggles brought back the horror of strangling the only woman he had ever truly loved. He flexed his fingers, rubbed them, and noticed the smear of Yvette’s blood across the back of his left hand.

  “I hereby sentence you to death,” he whispered, hoping that the words would obliterate his emotions. He must be an executioner, impassive as if he’d been carved out of stone. But in spite of the officious statement, in spite of the crimes Yvette had committed and the proper method he had chosen, this felt nothing like the future his grandfather once predicted. A future bright with promise had once more been stained dark crimson.

  Again he used his handkerchief to wipe away the blood; only this time it was hers, from where his bullet had torn across her upper arm. The smear was murder-bright against white linen, where it mingled with the stain from his scratch-wound.

  Shoving the handkerchief into his pocket, Darien turned to find the horse. From the struggling he heard in the underbrush, he guessed its driving lines had tangled. He hoped the leather reins held the mare fast long enough for him to catch it.

  Darien left the clearing. He was so eager to put this ordeal behind him that he never checked the knot at the tree’s base, the same knot interrupted by Yvette’s attempt to walk away.

  * * * “Oh, my God! Yvette!” Gabriel shouted.

  The sight of her hanging from the huge tree made him want to vomit. He’d been so close behind them. How had this been done so quickly?

  She hung so low that the tips of her swaying toes traced blurred patterns in the dust. As Gabe leapt from the horse’s back, he caught a glimpse of her face, dark with congestion. But he turned his back to her to untie the rope from the bottom of the tree trunk.

  The knot, which had already slipped considerably, yielded easily to his frantic efforts, and he fed the loosened rope upward, lowering the body to the ground.

  Not a body, damn it! He couldn’t think it yet. Maybe her neck had not been broken. Maybe there was still a chance she hadn’t finished strangling.

  He ran to her and rolled her faceup, then worked the noose free of her neck, his hands trembling so hard he could barely hold the rope. She’s not breathing, notbreathingnotbreathingnotbreathing . . .

  No! He had to stop, rein in his panic, and swallow back the sob that tried to burst free of his chest like a Minié ball in reverse. He pulled her close, both arms wrapped around her body, rocking her, while he fought to swallow back hot tears of rage and grief. He couldn’t let go, not even for a moment, for that would mean that she was gone. That would—

  Cold suspicion radiated through his center as his gaze fell on the shay. Still here . . . What did that mean? He couldn’t imagine Russell would have left it.

  Clumsily, his mind worked to fit the pieces into place. Russell would have used the horse to hang Yvette, but where was he—and it?

  Though he was still reeling with shock, Gabe knew he had to take Yvette with him on the horse. They had to get away from here before Darien Russell came back for that carriage. Ignoring the agony of his burnt hands, he hoisted her over the black gelding’s withers and climbed aboard the saddle just behind her.

  Along the back of Yvette’s neck he could see a row of dusky bruises already blooming where the noose had bit. He ignored the impulse to lay his ear against her back to try to hear if her heart beat. God help him, he couldn’t do it until they were well away from here, and even then, he wasn’t certain that he wanted to. As long as he didn’t know for sure, he wouldn’t have to face—

  Cutting short the thought, Gabe dug his heels into his tired mount’s flanks. But they never left the clearing.

  A gunshot cracked only an instant before the black horse staggered two steps and then fell, spilling both Yvette and Gabe out of the saddle. Gabe rolled to his feet to face Darien Russell, who had a revolver aimed toward the center of his chest.

  “You killed her, you bastard!” Gabe shouted, too upset to give a damn whether or not Russell pulled the trigger. All he had to live for, all he had of hope, lay crumpled and unmoving at his feet. The only thing that he had left to wish for was the chance to pound his fists through Darien Russell’s face.

  “She forced me to kill them,” Russell told him, and Gabe noticed that his face was ashen, as if what he had done had left him nauseated. “That made her a murderess.”

  Gabe stepped forward. “You sick, lying bastard, I’ll send you to hell.”

  “You go on ahead,” Darien told him, a malicious smile warming his tawny eyes, “and keep your little harlot company.”

  * * *

  Had Russell cut her down to inflict still more torture? Yvette moaned with the pain that pounded through her head and surged through her neck into her body. How her poor lungs ached with the effort of refilling! Her soul, too, protested her return. She didn’t want to leave Marie, who had embraced her warmly and then promised to take her to see François. François? Juste ciel, but that must mean that he had died, too. That was why the family hadn’t heard from him since his unit had moved to Tennessee. She wanted to see her brother, to ask him if the Yankees—

  Why had Darien taken her away from that bright place, where she could be with her sister and her brother? Why couldn’t he let her die in peace?

  A voice pulled her back to this world.

  “You sick, lying bastard, I’ll send you to hell.” Gabriel’s voice, so very angry.

  “You go on ahead”—Darien spoke this time, and bursts of panic detonated in her stomach—”and keep your little harlot company.”

  He meant to hurt Gabriel! But what could she do to prevent it? It took all her strength to force open her eyes and peer through the strands of loose hair that had fallen across her face.

  She heard a gun click on an empty chamber. Her vision focused just in time to see the smugness evaporate from Darien’s features. An instant later, Gabe leapt at him, knocking him to the ground, hammering him again and again, long beyond the point where the captain stopped resisting.

  Yvette had never seen such savage fury. In spite of what Darien had done to her today, in spite of the horrible way he’d killed her sister, she despised most of all the transformation he had wrought in Gabriel, who had loved so gently. God help her, she would not let Darien turn him into a murderer!

  “No . . .” she moaned, putting all her heart into that single syllable. Even so, the word was barely audible.

  Yet Gabriel froze, immobilized by the unexpected sound. His fist stopped half an inch from Russell’s face, as if he’d been paralyzed by terror. He didn’t turn toward her or even move his eyes, and she found herself wondering what he thought he would see if he looked toward her. Did he think the sound of her voice just another apparition, like that of his dead brother on the battlefield? Did he imagine if he turned his head, he would see her body, now beginning to cool and stiffen with the finality of death?

  Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on Russell’s blood-streaked face. Even from this vantage, Yvette could see that the captain’s nose was surely broken and several of his teeth had collapsed into jagged shards. Yet his breath rasped noisily through his shattered mouth. He might be unconscious, but he lived.

  At least for now.

  “No,” she repeated, this time slightly louder. “There’s been enough death . . . Gabriel.”

  This time, he could no more help turning toward her than the great river can help moving toward the sea. She attempted—without success—to push herself up on one elbow. Her raven tresses, which had come unbound, fell across her eyes to completely obscure her vision.

  She heard his footsteps and sensed, rather than saw, Gabriel kneeling down beside her. He brushed her hair from her face with a caress so tender that she barely felt his fingertips.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered. “Thank God for you, Yvette.”

  Carefully, he pulled her into his embrace, rocking her as one might an infant. She felt moisture where their faces touched. It might have been his tears or her own or both. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered
except that love remained. And that they both lived to see it through.

  * * *

  “You stand accused of horse theft, Private,” the white-haired colonel said sternly. Though he sat in one of the parlor’s chairs, he had not invited Gabe to do the same.

  Gabe had lost whatever patience he’d possessed for this sort of idiocy. His thoughts were with Yvette, who had been taken upstairs to be examined by a doctor. He’d explained her case first, from what had happened with her sister to her desperate flight toward safety. But Colonel Patterson had yet to comment on anything he’d said.

  Outside, thunder murmured, and the first raindrops tapped at the windows.

  “Are you angrier because I whipped an officer or because I dared think for myself?” Gabe demanded. “God knows, this army has done its best at every turn to punish soldiers for the slightest sign of personal initiative.”

  Colonel Patterson opened his mouth as if to protest, but Gabe cut him off before a single word erupted.

  “I understood Russell’s intentions when I saw him take Yvette— Miss Augeron,” he hastily corrected. “I’m still army personnel, so I used an army mount to follow. Would you rather I allowed the captain to lynch this woman because he was an officer? Would you prefer—”

  “Calm down, soldier!” the colonel interrupted. Pointing to the other chair, he ordered, “Now sit.”

  After taking a deep breath, Gabe complied. Shouting at this man wasn’t going to help either Yvette or him out of this mess.

  A pair of kittens bounded into the room. A silver tabby chased its gray-and-white littermate beneath the colonel’s desk.

  Patterson paid them no heed but continued speaking to Gabriel, “Fortunately for you, I received a telegram this afternoon from a Colonel Jeffers, stationed in New Orleans. He asked me to detain Captain Russell. Apparently evidence has been found to implicate him in the same crimes of which Miss Augeron had been accused.”

  “You knew? Then how could you let him—?”