Gwyneth Atlee Page 7

  Her own words shamed her, for at last she understood how much more a man was than his uniform. Yes, her sister had been wrong, but not for seeing past the Union blue. Her failure had been one of naïveté and not disloyalty.

  She’d take that letter from her reticule, Yvette decided, and she’d tear it into bits. She did not delude herself that such an action would truly benefit Marie, but it was the only way she could imagine of taking back her angry words. And letters to the dead had their own strange brand of logic.

  Panic jolted through her at the realization that her reticule was missing from the room. It contained her letters to Marie, her small supply of money, and most importantly, the document she’d sewn into the lining, the letter, written in Darien Russell’s hand, that she hoped would save her life—and destroy his.

  Suspicion blazed into anger as she thought of Gabriel. Had he taken it with him? Had he played her for a fool the same way Russell played Marie?

  Her heart thundered its denial. Gabriel Davis might be a damned Yankee, but he would not steal from her. He could not have said the things he had, kissed her the way he had, and stolen . . .

  Darien Russell had kissed her sister, and much more. She wanted to grasp her chamber pot and vomit, but instead she forced herself to think.

  Where had she last seen the cloth bag? When had she last held it?

  Then she knew. She’d taken it with her to the galley, and she had not brought it back. She swayed with the realization that she must have somehow lost it. With her whole life riding on that reticule, she had dropped it somewhere, perhaps when she had given that poor, starving man her food.

  As terrible, as frightened, as she felt, relief came, too. That she had not been so wrong about Gabriel, that he had not repaid her trust with treachery.

  The thought gave her strength, which she needed desperately, for she had no other choice but to try to retrieve her reticule from the wretched prisoners, who had undoubtedly discovered it by now.

  For without it, she knew she had no chance at all.

  Five

  The North is determined to preserve the Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche.

  —Texas Governor Sam Houston, 1859

  Darien Russell had spent most of the evening nursing a drink at the bar in the main cabin. From that vantage, he could talk with a few of the cabin passengers and watch for any sign of his quarry. But as men began to claim both cots and spaces on the carpet, the smooth Tennessee whiskey lost its power to ease his troubled mind. The idea of Yvette somewhere aboard this boat, laughing at his fruitless efforts, cast his thoughts into an uproar.

  It could be even worse, he realized. She could be talking to someone instead, perhaps even a Union officer. Though it seemed unlikely she would risk such a conversation, she was both charming and articulate enough to convince a reasonable man of his guilt.

  Perspiration erupted across Darien’s face like a liquid pox. This same fear had prompted him to allow her the opportunity to escape in New Orleans, to put distance between her and his chief detractor, Colonel Jeffers.

  At the thought of that insufferable Kentucky ruffian, Darien nearly swore aloud. The judgmental, sanctimonious yokel had despised him from the outset simply because he’d worked for the unpopular General Butler. Darien had never been implicated in any of the scandals that had led to Butler’s recall from New Orleans, but the stench clung to him as if he’d been consorting with a skunk.

  When General Banks, the new general in charge of the New Orleans occupation, had decided to place Darien on his own staff, Colonel Jeffers voiced his suspicions. Darien Russell, he claimed, had been fleecing wealthy Creole families. If only he could convince one of the victims to come forward.

  But General Banks had not been interested in rumors, just in Darien’s knowledge of the workings of New Orleans. Colonel Jeffers should have let the matter drop, but the rude Kentucky native would not let the matter rest.

  Jeffers’s investigation had already cost another of Butler’s former aides a death sentence. Remembering Major Stolz’s hanging, Darien wished to God he’d had the chance to kill Jeffers instead of the colonel’s lackey, Lieutenant Simonton. But in doing Jeffers’s bidding, Simonton had gotten too close to evidence that would incriminate Russell. Far too close, Darien remembered, until he’d had no choice but to mix a poison into Simonton’s drink to escape the gallows.

  Disagreeable as it had proved, Lieutenant Simonton’s murder turned out to be a happy accident, since Yvette had been the handy scapegoat. If only she hadn’t shared her suspicions with Marie as well instead of just Lieutenant Simonton, as Russell had first thought. If only he could have avoided killing his beloved Marie, too.

  Her white throat, mottled with dark bruises, flashed before his eyes. He thought of how he’d kissed it, so many times before, when her family believed she was visiting her insane friend Madame Bouchard. How he’d kissed and touched her, how he’d charmed her out of her long-guarded virginity. Before he’d had to kill her.

  His fingers curled and clenched, as if they could not forget the sin they had committed. Or been forced to commit by that damnable little spy Yvette. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, his mind transposing the dark splotches that ringed Marie’s pale throat onto her sister, his plans drawing the noose around her neck to spare his own.

  He smiled, envisioning Yvette’s swift fall through the gallows, the sharp jerk as the rope stopped her, and the hideous death dance of her limbs. Just as poor Marie convulsed as he’d squeezed tight—all because of what Yvette had done.

  What he intended would be in truth no murder; he merely acted as the tool of justice, as blameless as the executioner. Yvette deserved to die far more than Simonton or Marie. After all, she was the one most guilty of their deaths. If she hadn’t been so damned suspicious, if she hadn’t dug after his secrets so tenaciously, both of them would be alive. Their blood was on her hands.

  Or more accurately, her mouth. He’d close it now, forever. Close it so she’d never sing one of her damned mocking songs again.

  And then he would resign from the army so he could go home to his wife. Only this time when he saw Constance, she’d realize that he now had his own fortune. She’d be forced to admit that at long last he’d made good his predictions of success.

  Finally, Darien’s worries prompted him to abandon his comfortable seat. After straightening his frock coat and sleeking back his hair, he left the main cabin and ventured out onto the deck. It took him only a few minutes to find a group of men talking quietly, apparently as restless as he felt. One recalled a woman he’d seen on the wharf boat earlier.

  “Pretty little thing, dark hair and a pert figure. I knowed a girl like that once back in—”

  “I’m not interested in hearing how attractive she is,” Darien interrupted. “The woman is wanted for questioning for serious offenses. I only need to know where she is now.”

  “Hell’s bells, Cap’n,” the short, slight young soldier answered. One shoulder was several inches higher than the other, giving him a distinctly lopsided appearance. “What kind of ‘serious offenses’ could a gal like that get into?”

  The fool didn’t think any straighter than he stood. Damned imbecile.

  “Is murder serious enough for you?” Darien growled. “Murder of a Union officer?”

  He could all too well imagine Yvette laughing at his frustration, immortalizing it into more verses for her song. Back in New Orleans they were still laughing at him. All except Colonel Jeffers, who was too busy investigating. Darien had to find the girl before she managed to contact that pious bastard and ruin everything for him.

  The soldier’s expression sobered. “I hear tell them New Orleans ladies did every goldarned thing they could think of to let our boys know how they wasn’t welcome. But I never guessed they gone and killed folks, too.”


  If Darien were still headmaster at his own school, he’d box this laggard’s ears for his atrocious grammar. But of course that was ridiculous. No young man so obviously ill bred would ever meet the standards of his august academy. Besides, the school had long since closed its doors.

  How could he forget how Constance had laughed at that failure? His rage sparked hot against the memory. She’d never understood that he was destined for great things. Oh, she’d claimed to believe it when they were courting and he’d still had a healthy portion of Grandfather’s money. But she’d never really shared his faith in his potential.

  Darien returned his attention to the dolt before him. He had to be certain the soldier would come running if he chanced to see Yvette. “Miss Augeron is a danger to every man aboard.”

  “A little thing like her?” His laughter died a quick death as he noted Darien’s expression. “Sorry, Cap’n. Just hard to imagine, that’s all. We’ll keep a lookout for her.”

  “See that you do, man. See that you do,” Russell responded. “I’m eager to take her back to New Orleans to face justice.”

  Actually, he wanted nothing of the sort. If he had, he would not have orchestrated her escape or chased after her so far. Though she’d evaded him longer than he had expected, he had her cornered now— and just the way he wished.

  All alone. And as far from New Orleans—and justice —as she’d ever been in all her life.

  * * *

  Gabe made his way toward the bow, keeping the starlit river to his left. Each blade of the paddle wheel slapped its wet rhythm against the dark waters, carrying him that much closer to his home.

  The thought of home struck him like dissonant notes on a piano, a chord that ought to resonate with sweetness but disappointingly rang sour. For more than two years his every breath had been directed toward returning there, to prove to his mother and his sisters he’d survived. To face his father if only to show him he was man enough to own up to what he’d done in his last battle.

  But he knew now he’d been lying to himself. If he were really man enough, the dark splashing of the steamer wouldn’t drench his soul in dread and his conversation with Eve Alexander wouldn’t have churned up so much guilt and fear—and want.

  As he painstakingly picked his path among the men who crowded nearly every open space, his mind navigated the varied feelings she’d stirred up. First of all, gratitude. Almost certainly, Eve had saved his life this evening not only by standing up to Silas Deming but by listening to the story that had burned inside him, as hot and lethal as a fire in a coal mine. He felt an undeniable attraction, too, a desire to explore the surge of sweetness he’d tasted with her kiss.

  He smiled, remembering the way she’d felt, the softness of her lips and the warmth of her small hand as it held his. His steps faltered as his mind replayed the little sound she’d made deep in her throat. Had it been, as he hoped, a fierce hunger awakening, or was it instead the voice a woman gave to regret, a desperate desire to take back what had been too hastily offered? He sucked cool night air between clenched jaws, sure that he’d been right the first time.

  She’d felt the same strong current of attraction despite the fact that she clearly saw him as an enemy. She certainly hadn’t been shy about expressing her contempt for those soldiers who’d worn the Union blue. He wondered if that beautiful mouth of hers had ever offered comfort to a Rebel soldier, like the ones who had systematically starved so many men in Andersonville.

  Had she been going tonight to meet some secessionist among the deck passengers? Why else had she been down below close to the boilers?

  As a wave of nausea rolled over him, he wondered why it mattered. Why should he care who she was, where she was going, whom she loved? Certainly he owed her his thanks for being such a Good Samaritan, but the last thing that he needed was an entanglement with any woman, much less some damned Southerner.

  His thoughts turned bitter as they circled back to Georgia, to the things he’d had to do to survive the camp. He thought of the times he and Jacob had worked their hands bloody using a knife and a railroad spike to fashion buckets out of canteens, oyster cans, or whatever else was handy. They’d sold these to other prisoners and then used some of the proceeds to buy their way onto the never-ending burial details so they could leave the camp and gain the chance to trade.

  Gabe remembered digging those graves outside of camp, though at times he felt so weak, he feared he might collapse inside one and then be covered by another exhausted prisoner. The holes they dug were never deep enough, for always, always, more corpses awaited the thin comfort of their earthen shrouds and the prisoners hurried toward their stolen moments with the local farmers. For a price, guards turned their backs as food and money changed hands over corpses, even those of men the prisoners had known. But never any of the four friends. All of them shared whatever they could manage, their loyalty surviving earth that oozed with maggots and air fouled by an unspeakable stench.

  And they’d all survived despite the damned Confederate guards, and especially their superiors, the men who’d decided to withhold the most basic elements of life: food, clean water, shelter. Gabe hoped to God there was a hell so that Capt. Henry Wirz, the bastard in charge of the prison, would burn there forever.

  But even as the devil’s flames licked Wirz’s boots in his imagination, Gabe knew that a young woman as kind as Eve knew nothing of the real horrors of the war. Yes, she read the papers, according to what she’d told him, but he’d learned the hard way that the stirring accounts in the press bore little resemblance to the mud and blood and mayhem that existed in the field. Hating Eve for Camp Sumter, the Andersonville prison, made about as much sense as some Southerner cursing Gabe’s mother for the Union soldiers who’d looted their way across the South.

  Still, if he had good sense, he’d stay away from her. He already had trouble looking to throw him off this steamer and waiting for him at home in Ohio. He could ill afford the complication of a tart-mouthed Southerner.

  “. . . pretty, dark-haired girl on board, with hazel eyes. About twenty years old and stands about five feet one.”

  The voice wrenched Gabe’s attention from what he was doing, and he tripped over a sleeping prisoner’s outstretched arm. As soon as he apologized, he moved where he could hear the man’s words clearly.

  “Her name is Yvette Augeron, although she’s likely to be using an alias. She’s wanted for serious crimes against the Union.”

  He peered around a corner, toward the bow. Even in the dim lamplight, Gabe noted the officer’s crisp blue uniform. A tall, elegant-looking figure, he held himself as straight as the creases on his trousers, as if he meant to demonstrate refined posture to his inferiors. As with his stance, his light brown hair and slightly darker beard were so perfectly well ordered, they looked like something from an illustration, not real life. The jackass looked as if his grooming hadn’t suffered one whit from the war.

  Or, Gabe wondered, did his instantaneous dislike of the man stem from his realization that it was Eve he was describing? Eve, or Yvette Augeron, who was wanted for crimes against the Union. Serious crimes, the man was saying. That must mean that he planned to arrest her.

  The image of Eve as a criminal didn’t sit right with him. She’d helped him, hadn’t she? Even though he’d been a Union soldier, someone she’d barely met, she’d stepped in at her own risk to save his life. Gabe didn’t know what sort of charges this darkhaired officer might have against her, but he did know he couldn’t let the fellow catch her unaware.

  He wished he could hear the other soldiers’ responses, but all Gabe could make out was the soft rumble of their words. The next clear voice was the officer’s.

  “Capt. Darien Russell. If you hear anything, I expect a full report.”

  With that, the captain suddenly strode around the bow’s curve and rammed into Gabe.

  “Watch where you’re standing, Private!” he snapped.

  As if there were any other place where Gabe might step
.

  “Excuse me”—Gabe let the pause stretch out longer than he should have, until the fellow’s face screwed up with indignation—”sir.”

  “Salute, you insolent laggard. You prisoners have forgotten everything that was ever drummed into your thick skulls. With men like you, it’s a wonder our side won.”

  “I’m not sure we have yet, sir. I heard the guards say they’d seen muzzle flashes on the shore tonight,” Gabe lied to vex him.

  Captain Russell glanced quickly over his shoulder toward the east.

  “Better watch yourself,” Gabe said. “I hear they fancy wider targets than us prisoners. And those pretty gold bars give them something good to aim at.”

  “At which to aim,” Russell corrected primly. “Now stand aside. I have government business to attend.”

  He shoved Gabe into another sleeping soldier as he passed. “Damn it! What the hell—!” the startled man yelped.

  Apparently, Russell was in too much of a hurry to lecture the prisoner about his failure to salute, for he rushed away. Gabe trailed in his wake, leaving the soldier to continue cursing his rude awakening.

  As Russell strode toward the main cabin, Gabe wondered how he could conceivably prevent a captain from detaining a woman passenger. He tried once more to reconcile what little he knew of Eve with the notion that she might be some kind of criminal. His gut feeling told him she was far less capable of wrongdoing than this pretentious fool who meant to detain her.

  His mind struggled desperately to form a plan to stop this captain without getting himself in any deeper trouble than he was already in.

  * * *

  With a trembling hand, Yvette swiped away the tears of gratitude that blurred her vision. She had never felt such relief in all her life as when the soldier with the tangled beard handed back her reticule.

  “Got me this keepin’ it away from some of ’em.” He gestured proudly toward a swelling eye. “But I didn’t forget how you gave my friend here your dinner. What kind of men are we if we’d steal from an angel?”