An Outlaw in Wonderland (3 page)

“You’re tired,” she said.

“I’m”—he dropped his hand—“not.”

She nearly called him a liar, but she’d already insulted him enough. She could see
from his confusion that he’d had no idea his request would be viewed as improper.

“How long have you
been
in this country?” She stepped closer and caught the scent of horse and dust. But
if he’d been sleeping, then how—

Men poured into the room. They were so dirty, bloody, and rank with the smell of horse,
she concluded she’d smelled them and not him. They carried a stretcher and they dumped
an especially bloody, dirty, smelly soldier onto the table before leaving without
a word. Really, what was there to say?

Annabeth stepped forward before the last man cleared the door. So intent was she on
the fellow writhing on the table that she barely noticed the sting when she doused
her hands in the bucket of more than water. By the time she’d dried those fingers,
Dr. Walsh already had a scalpel in his.

“Where—” she began, and he slit the man’s trousers up the side, revealing a long,
deep gash in his thigh.

As he dipped his hand and the instrument back into the water, he snapped, “Bullet
in or out?”

“In,” the patient managed through clenched teeth.

A movement at the doorway caused all three of them to glance up as more soldiers entered
with more wounded. The remainder of the day was drenched in blood and sweat. The sun
went down; the moon rose. Annabeth’s back ached. Her fingers cramped. Her eyes burned.
She had never felt so good.

When the last patient lay in the infirmary and no more rested on the floor, in the
hall, or outside on the ground, Annabeth plunged her fingers into clear, fresh water
and relished that, for a change, she hadn’t been the one bringing it.

She’d dug out bullets, stitched bayonet wounds, set broken bones. Most of the practices
she had never performed before, yet with a few words from Ethan Walsh, she’d understood
what was needed. She had saved lives, and her hands fairly shook with the wonder of
it.

“I’ll have a word with Mrs. Dimmity.”

If she’d thought Dr. Walsh had looked tired that morning, she’d been wrong. Tired
was how he looked now. Although something burned in his eyes that seemed to reflect
the fiery sensation beneath her breast.

A sense of accomplishment? Of triumph? Or more?

“I didn’t think. I just wanted . . .” He paused, and she heard the next word as if
he’d spoken it aloud.

You.

Annabeth swallowed and ducked her head so he wouldn’t see her flush. Unlike most women,
when Annabeth’s face heated, she did not appear lovely; rather, she looked blotchy
and ill.

“I’ll withdraw the request. Ye can go back to bein’—”

“No one,” she interrupted. “Doing nothing.”

If she hadn’t been here and seen what had occurred, she might think they slaughtered
hogs on a daily basis in this room. But she
had
been here, and she’d not only seen what was done, she’d been the one doing it.

A peace such as Annabeth had never known settled over her. There was nowhere else
she would rather be.

“You will not withdraw your request, Dr. Walsh.”

His eyebrows lifted, as did his lovely lips. She smiled in return as she realized
something else.

There was no one else she’d rather be with.

T
he intelligence on the Confederate Ranger Mosby led to Major Forbes being dispatched
from Falls Church with one hundred and fifty Union men in pursuit of the partisans,
which resulted in one hundred and six Union losses—twelve dead, thirty-seven wounded,
and fifty-seven captured.

Mosby lost six men. Six.

Still, the information had been valuable enough to attract the attention of General
Grant, who had given a commendation to Ethan through Law.

Men like you will win us this war.

Ethan only hoped it was soon. Each day brought more wounded, each night more dead.
Ethan listened, looked, lurked, and discovered several more bits of information for
Mikey. The last time they’d met, his brother related Law’s newest plot to end the
war.

“Losin’ their leaders can make men retreat before they even start,” Mikey said. “If
we know where the battle’s gonna be, me and the sniper will get there first. He’ll
eliminate the officers.”

Ethan winced as if he’d heard the shots, but he couldn’t argue with Law’s logic. The
removal of a few top men might, in the end, save the lives of many.

The sole bright spot in each day was Annabeth Phelan, and considering that Ethan saw
her only across the bloody, broken bodies of young men, he shouldn’t be so happy about
it. However, his work was much easier now that she was part of it. She was intelligent,
skilled, and devoted. He felt less alone every minute she was near.

He’d taken to thinking of her as
Beth
in his mind, though he hadn’t yet had the courage to call her so aloud. Would she
think he was forward and crass? Or would she like it?

Ethan stepped from the surgery, then stood blinking at the sky. While buried in blood,
he forgot how bright the stars were, how green the grass, how exquisite the flowers.
As he lowered his gaze, he saw Miss Phelan—
Beth
, his mind whispered—speaking to a man he didn’t recognize. Not that such was unusual.
There were so many people at Chimborazo—personnel, patients, soldiers—in truth, he
hardly knew any.

But there was something about this one that made Ethan uneasy. He kept his cap drawn
low and his face tilted so shadows obscured his features. His clothes were baggy,
dirty, and nondescript. Of course, at this point in the war, whose weren’t? Everyone
made do with what they had, found, or stole. Still, Ethan had learned enough since
becoming a spy to suspect that anyone trying that hard to appear like everyone else
wasn’t.

He took a step in that direction, and the man murmured to Annabeth, ducked his head,
and strode away. Ethan might have followed, perhaps called out, but she turned, and
the moon cast a bluish hue across her open, honest, innocent face. She wasn’t beautiful,
perhaps not even pretty, but when she smiled at him, all Ethan saw was her.

“Was there something you needed, Doctor?”

You
, his mind whispered.

“Not at the moment,” he said, lifting his gaze to seek out the fellow she’d spoken
with and determine where he’d gone.

Except he
was
gone. Considering all that lay before them was a long, flat expanse that led nowhere,
Ethan’s neck prickled. “Who was that ye were talkin’ to?”

“A friend from childhood.”

An unreasoning jealousy overcame him. She, no doubt, had friends all over this camp,
all over this state. He wanted to be her friend.

Liar
. He wanted to be so much more.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

“I’m not alone.” Her lips curved. “I have you.”

He wanted her to have him, while he had her. His attraction for Annabeth Phelan was
all consuming. He dreamed of her throughout the endless nights.

“Not all men are like me.”

“None of them are.”

She didn’t know how right she was, and she never could.

“I’ll walk ye to yer quarters.”

She nodded and led him back the way he had come, past the surgery, in the opposite
direction. He forgot about her friend—where he’d gone, who he was, and why, if he
was a friend, he’d disappeared instead of shaking hands and introducing himself. It
was only later Ethan thought of such things.

They didn’t speak; they didn’t touch, and that was all right. Whenever Ethan was with
her, pretty much everything was.

“Here we are,” she murmured.

Ethan had no excuse for what he did next. She wasn’t his; she couldn’t be. Yet when
she lifted her face, he kissed her. Nothing was ever the same again.

She did not gasp; she did not cry out or push him away. She did not even stiffen;
though he did. Down low, where such things occurred, he came immediately to rigid,
relentless, and ready life.

He’d said she shouldn’t be out alone because not all men were like him. But the way
he felt now, he was very like the men he’d warned her about. He wanted to shove her
against the wall right here, or perhaps drag her between the buildings over there.
Haul up her skirts, skim a finger over the soft skin where thigh became buttock, fill
his palms with that flesh as she gasped into his mouth, as she whispered his name.

“Ethan.”

As she whispered it now, against his lips, their breath mingling. They stood so close,
she would have felt the brush of his erection if not for the barrier of her skirts
and crinoline. Then she would have been screaming, pushing, pointing. Telling him
and everyone who would listen what he had done, how he had dared. He would find himself
married to her by tomorrow, and that would be—

Her tongue touched his. How could she help it? His had somehow made its way into her
mouth, and she tasted of dawn. Of new days and hope. Of sunshine pushing through darkness.
Of life. And Ethan thought . . .

If he found himself married to her tomorrow, perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad.

In the distance, cannons sounded, reminding him who he was, why he was here. He couldn’t
marry her while living a lie. He shouldn’t kiss her while living one either.

Ethan stepped back. Her mouth glistened in the moonlight. Her tongue peeked out, as
if she wanted to taste him again. He certainly wanted to taste her.

“Beth, I . . .” he began, uncertain what he meant to say, to do.

“Don’t you
dare
say you’re sorry!”

He snapped his mouth shut as she spun and went into the building. The slam of the
door echoed almost as loudly as the artillery.

Had he meant to say that? Probably. It was what men like him did with women like her
in situations like—

He glanced around. This situation was not one for which any etiquette existed. He
was a physician with the blood of men—no, the blood of
boys
—beneath his fingernails. She was a nurse who no doubt had the same blood in the same
place. They were not in a drawing room preparing to dance. The only music was that
distant rumble of guns.

Yes, kissing her had been inappropriate. But here . . .

What wasn’t?

•   •   •

Annabeth’s lips still tingled; she could taste Ethan on her tongue. Closing her eyes,
she pressed her fingers to her mouth.

He’d called her Beth. No one else ever had, and the way he’d said her name in an accent
that brought to mind emerald hills she hadn’t seen yet somehow knew made her shiver
despite the never-ending heat.

Were all kisses the same? Consuming. Inflaming. A promise to a world unexplored.

She had been kissed only once before, and at the first touch of the boy’s lips, she’d
hauled back and broken his nose.

“You took long enough to get here.”

Annabeth’s lips tightened beneath her fingertips. She dropped her hand. “Speak of
the devil”—Annabeth opened her eyes as Moses Farquhar stepped out of the gloom—“and
he appears.”

With golden hair and a gaze the shade of spring grass, Moze would have been too pretty
if it weren’t for the permanent crick she’d put in his slightly large nose when he
was fourteen. Why he’d thought he could kiss her back then, she’d never quite figured
out. At the time, she’d wanted to pound him into the dirt the way she had when she
was eight. On the Phelan farm, Moze had just seemed like one more brother among many.

When Mrs. Farquhar died after scraping herself with a pitchfork used to shovel manure—her
arm had first swelled, then oozed, then turned black—her husband was unable to care
for three-year-old Moze and still manage the farm. Annabeth’s mother, who already
had six children underfoot, had shrugged and welcomed another.

As Moze and Luke were a few months apart in age, they’d been inseparable from the
first. Even after his father remarried and Moze returned home, the two boys had spent
all of their time together, doing their chores side by side, first at one farm, then
at the other. For fun, they would harass Annabeth until she wanted nothing more than
to smother them both.

“You’re the one who ran off as if he had something to hide,” Annabeth said.

“I do.”

“Moze, what are you—?”

“I’m a spy, Annie Beth Lou.” He called her by the name both he and Luke had used for
her when they were children. She hadn’t liked it much then either.

Silence reigned, broken only by the distant guns; then Annabeth laughed. “Sure you
are.”

“Did you ever wonder how I could stop in and check on you both at the farm and here?
If I were attached to a regiment, I wouldn’t be free to travel about.”

He had a point. But his behavior tonight had her asking: “Who are you spying on?”

“Whom do you think?”

“The way you slipped off at the first sight of Dr. Walsh, I wonder.”

He made a disgusted sound. “Only Yankees shorten names,
Beth
.” The nickname, when spoken with a sarcastic Southern twist, no longer sounded like
an endearment. “Haven’t you ever noticed that?”

“As I don’t know any Yankees, I haven’t.”

“You’ll have to take my word on it.”

“What are you trying to say?”

He sighed and reached into his pocket, withdrawing a paper and holding it out.

Annabeth put her hands behind her back; an unreasonable belief took hold of her. If
she didn’t look at that paper, whatever was written on it would not be true.

Moze tightened his lips at the same time he tightened his fingers, crumpling the sheet
and dropping it to the floor. “Luke is missing.”

“Missing?” she repeated. “What does that mean?”

“Captured. Wounded. Gone.”

She didn’t like any of those words, but at least they meant—

“Alive.”

His gaze flicked to hers, then away. “Not always. Missing can mean dead but never
found. Lying in a Yankee hospital. Unnamed in one of ours.”

“Where did this happen?”

“Mount Zion Church.”

“I didn’t hear anything about a battle there.”

“Not a battle.” He let out a quick breath. “He’s with Mosby. Or at least he was.”

“He’s a guerilla?”

“Partisan,” Moze snapped.

“They were disbanded.” The partisans were considered rogues, rebels even in a rebel
army, and Lee had hated them.

“Mosby’s Rangers were allowed to continue, as they possessed some form of military
discipline.”

“How long has Luke been with them?”

“From the beginning.”

“And you didn’t tell me?

“Luke didn’t want you to worry.”

“Luke? Or you?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.” She
would
have worried; she
had
worried. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“I didn’t come for that.”

“Then why?”

His hands clenched, released. “You shouldn’t be kissing him.”

“You’re here to instruct me about whom I should kiss?”

He rubbed the bump in his nose. “Why didn’t you hit him?”

“None of your business. Now, why are you here? Besides the desire to stick your crooked
nose where it doesn’t belong?”

“Someone at Chimborazo has been telling the Yankees everything he sees, hears, and
reads.”

Understanding dawned. “You can’t—He isn’t—Ethan’s a doctor. A very good one.”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t a spy as well.”

“Why would you think that?”

“One man came through this hospital who knew that Mosby was headed to Rectortown.”

“Only one? I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe it. He was sent to call the Rangers. He delivered the message, but he never
returned to the rendezvous. I traced him here. Directly to Dr. Walsh’s table.”

“That means nothing.”

“The only person with the knowledge of the Rangers’ movements comes to Chimborazo;
the last man he sees is Ethan Walsh. Then the Yankees arrive.”

“You spoke with this messenger? He admitted telling Dr. Walsh the information? Who
else was in the room?”

“When he’s not unconscious, he’s delirious. Even if he survives, he’ll be lucky if
he remembers his name, let alone what he said and to whom he talked.”

Annabeth threw up her hands. “Which means you have no proof.”

“I’m not done. There’s a Yankee sniper killing officers.”

“Isn’t that what Yankee snipers do?”

“He arrives ahead of everyone, shoots before the armies even engage. Every single
division that’s lost their leaders reported sending wounded here. Wounded who were
well aware in which direction they were marching. Next thing we know, their officers
are shot in the head.” Annabeth flinched as if she’d heard the report. “This man is
the best marksman we’ve ever seen. We have to stop him.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“I’ll need some help.” His imploring gaze told her exactly whom he needed help from.

“Not me,” she said.

“Luke may be dead because of intelligence that came from
this
hospital. Don’t you want to know if Dr. Walsh is responsible before you kiss him
again?”

“He isn’t.”

“You’re so sure?” Moze asked, and she nodded. “Then prove it.”

•   •   •

After a nearly sleepless night, Annabeth rolled out of bed at dawn and went to work.
She stepped into the surgery ward and paused at the sight of Ethan Walsh.