Circle of Spies (47 page)

He paused with his hand halfway to the knob, turned to her instead, and cupped her cheek. “Just one more,” he murmured before he lowered his lips to hers.

He made it count. Where his embrace a minute earlier had soothed and steadied, this one stole her breath and made her head swim. She held tight, praying with every shared beat of their hearts that this moment would be one of many more. Perhaps not today, but surely they could make a way for themselves. He could come back. She could follow him. Something. Because as his touch stilled her memories and his heart lit a new fire in hers, she knew without doubt that she would never get over this man. If he left, she would mourn him the rest of her days.

When he pulled away, she nearly begged him to hold her longer. But the memories crowded again, making her throat go tight.

Paper now. Begging and pleading later.

He must have read the mounting disquiet in her face. His eyes went dark, his mouth set in a firm line, and he pulled her quickly through the doors, locking them behind him. Then she led the way to the main stairs and up to her drawing room.

He pulled out her desk chair for her, and she opened the topmost drawer to take out paper. Then, with the key hidden in that drawer, she opened the bottom one and withdrew a quill.

“Let me know what I can do.” Slade leaned onto the edge of her desk, fiddling with the blotter. He must still be nervous, still scared for her, to indulge in idle movement like that.

Hoping her smile reassured him, she turned back to the paper and let her pen take the lead.

The lines forced their way forward first, perhaps because of their oddity. On the backs of papers, many of them, some barely visible in pencil, others strong and bold, but looking like random scratches…when looked at alone.

Puzzles. Slade couldn't have known how right a word he had chosen. That was what each of the pages looked like as they marched through her mind, pieces of a puzzle. She copied a few of them down, but smaller in scale, and let the mental pictures shift and rearrange until she found the ones that matched.

“Maps.” Slade leaned over her when several of them were completed. “May I?”

“Please.” She needed the work space. Handing them to him, she took out fresh paper, pulled to mind fresh images.

Codes. Not one, like the Culpers used, but many. She had to sift and sort to figure out which key went with which message, and the effort brought a pounding to her head. But they settled, one by one. And one by one, she transcribed the messages.

Scarcely taking the time to read the letters and notes as she wrote them, she handed them off and moved on to the next. Eventually she took a moment to stretch, to loosen her neck.

To smile at Slade, who was poking through her bottom drawer. “Looking for something in particular, Detective?”

He angled an unrepentant grin her way. “A pen, at first. Then I thought I had better liberate my handkerchief. Then I had to wonder what it was wrapped around.” He had her vial of lilac water in hand and gave it a swirl.

She snatched the square of white linen back from his fingers and shoved it into her pocket with the links of silver. “Oh no, you don't.”

Her nerve endings danced to his laughter. After uncorking the vial, he took a sniff. The smile he wore did strange things to her chest. “Smells like you.”

“That is the idea. For my correspondence.”

He put that one back and picked up the vial of invisible ink. Pulled out the cork and sniffed at it too. This time his brow furrowed. “This isn't perfume.”

It was her turn to smile. “Your skills of observation never cease to amaze me. What was your first clue? Its total lack of odor?”

With an exaggerated glare, he recorked the vial. “What is it? Some serum to make your wit more biting?”

“As if I need the aid.” She flexed her cramping hand. To no one else outside the Ring would she ever give the truth about that bottle. But this was Slade. “It's invisible ink.”

He froze with the bottle poised over its spot in her drawer. “Pardon?”

“One of Hez's concoctions. The other is the counter liquor, to develop it.”

Though she didn't look at him, she heard him switch the bottles out. “You seem to have used a great deal of it.”

There was a fine line between suspicion and curiosity, and she wasn't sure which side his tone struck. She picked up her pen again and debated. She would be perfectly comfortable telling him about the Culpers, but that didn't seem to be a decision she ought to make alone. For now, she smiled. “Wouldn't you, if you had some?”

He snorted a laugh. “I guess I would.” More shuffling noises followed, though there was nothing else of interest in there. “Ah. Pen.”

She let him steal a piece of paper from her stack and kept at her work, pausing now and then to give her hand a rest. The clock in the hall chimed two in the afternoon when she finally set the quill down and stared at the sheet before her.

How many times in a few short months could one un-wish a truth?

Leaning over her again, Slade hissed out a breath. “The task is going to be immense for them. Stockpiling all those weapons and supplies in so many places. And am I reading this right? It sounds as though they expect him to be the one to rouse the leaders of the next rebellion. I guess he is in the best position to do so, being so well respected by Union politicians.”

“I read it the same way.” She squeezed her eyes shut and took a moment to be thankful when no new images swarmed her. “But it sounds as though the other captains have not even begun yet. Why, then, is he so set on getting his cache in place by Easter?” She splayed her hand on the paper, just below those freshly penned words.

Slade's silence held for only a moment. “Because that isn't the only task this castle has been assigned.”

Very true. They had also the task of kidnapping Lincoln, and try as Devereaux might to stay out of it, he was still a part. If caught, the
other Knights could implicate him. He would have to be in a position to escape to safety, from which he could still call those secret leaders to arms, his cache already in place.

But Easter was only five days away. That meant he would be leaving within days to take it… She pulled forward the maps Slade had set on the corner of the desk. “Western Maryland, it looks like. Perhaps West Virginia. But what is this?” She indicated a few dark spots on the map of the Appalachians, another that seemed to be little more than random lines.

“Mountainous out there. So perhaps caves?”

It made more sense than anything else. “When he went to Cumberland in February, he must have been finding his location.”

Silence greeted that logic, and when she looked up at Slade's profile again, she found his jaw set, his eyes flinty. She settled her fingers on the hand he had braced on the desk. “You cannot stop them all, my love. You are but one man.”

“I know.” Heavy words that spoke a vast truth into that simple cliché. “I'll get a message to Pinkerton, asking for help. But…”

She waited and then squeezed his hand. “But?”

Shaking his head, he straightened. “They won't come. They don't trust me enough.”

“We do.” She stood alongside him and kept her fingers clasped in his. “Use us. Walker, Granddad, my brothers. Me, if I can help.” He didn't need to know their name to know the Culpers were ready.

Resistance gleamed in his eyes, and she could understand that. He wanted his brothers, the ones he had served beside for years. The ones lost to him through the treachery of the man who shared his blood but not his heart.

Still. “You cannot do this alone, Slade. You need us.”

“I need you safe.” He pulled her against him, so decisively that it might have been fierce if not for the fear in his eyes. “That's what I need.”

She could understand that too. But that need was surely secondary.

He would see that when the time came.

Thirty

A
knock sounded at the front door.

Slade looked up from the volume of Kierkegaard in his hands. Even with the Danish dictionary he had found, he hadn't made it through the first sentence. He hadn't really expected to, but Marietta had bet him his handkerchief for a kiss that she could translate it before he could, so what was a man to do?

Lose—obviously, what with her unfair advantage. Not that he minded in the least the payment she would demand. But since nothing else he read made any more sense to his preoccupied mind than the Danish, he might as well give it a few hours.

Another knock reminded him that Norris and Tandy had been given the afternoon off to attend a church service. Slade pushed himself up and strode from the library, opened the door to one of Hughes's servants from across the street.

“There you is, Mr. Slade. This just come for you. Boy said it was real impo'tant.”

“Thanks, Eli.” Slade took the letter and closed the door.

The ladies' voices from the main floor drawing room seeped into the hall, Barbara excusing herself to check on Cora, and then Mrs. Hughes's laborious sigh. “I don't know, dear,” the woman said. “It is such a very
long
performance.”

Marietta's laughter soothed a few of his rough edges. “That is the idea, Mother Hughes. Bach wanted listeners to leave the
St. Matthew's Passion
emotionally and physically exhausted. How better to contemplate all Christ did for us on this day?”

Slade smiled and carried the missive back into the library, not too upset over the thought of Mrs. Hughes not joining them at the church for the performance that afternoon. Granted, she had been far more palatable since the mugging, but he would already be dealing with the Arnaud brothers. That was quite enough for one Good Friday outing.

Two days from Easter. Something would be happening soon, and that certainty wound his nerves tighter than a spring-loaded coil.

Slade glanced at the envelope, his pulse hammering when he recognized John Booth's hand. He broke the seal and pulled out the paper.

We move tonight. I just discovered the tyrant will be attending
Our American Cousin
at Ford's this evening. Such a stroke of fortune—nay, of fate—must not be ignored. Surratt is still not home from Canada and several of the others are unreachable, so we haven't the men for the original scheme.

We must swear instead to assassination. Lewis will strike Seward in his home. Port Tobacco the vice president in his hotel room. You the secretary of war. I will handle the tyrant myself.

Our moment is 10:15—timed according to the loudest moment of the play, when a gun's report will be muted by laughter. Then follow the escape route without delay.

Slade crumpled the sheet in his hand. Perhaps he had known all along, as he saw the hatred in the Knights' eyes, that no one would be content with merely kidnapping Lincoln. Still, he had hoped and prayed.

For just a moment, he squeezed his eyes shut and let the words that had been rattling around in his mind for the past day clang louder in his ears, the ones in the telegram from Pinkerton.
You know I believe you, but I am afraid you are on your own. Use your best judgment, but do not invite defeat if the odds are too much against you.

The odds. He had made a career of calculating them before he left the gambler's life, had used the lessons learned at the card table time
and again as a detective. His gut knew the odds without any input from his head.

Three men, all with pistols loaded and primed. Three men, all bound for different parts of Washington. And only one of him, forced to decide whose life was the most worth saving. Politically, the answer was obvious. He must, at all costs, protect the president.

The families of the other targets would disagree.

Lord, what am I to do? Yetta was right. I can't stop them all. Not on my own.

Instead of an answer, another realization hit. He wouldn't be up against three—he would be up against four. Hughes would have gotten word too. He would even now be coupling his cars full of gold and guns and powder to a train headed into the mountains. He would follow his own plan, one that guaranteed his safety so he could lead the next rebellion.

One that surely included Marietta by his side.

“Slade?”

Had his thoughts summoned her? He blinked, focused on her beautiful, worried frown, and reached for her hand. Pulled her into the room, past his usual chair, and into the alcove. The one where, two and a half months ago, she had collapsed in tears.

That day she had been oblivious to anything but her inner turmoil. Today, her entire focus was upon his face, upon his disquiet.

If it was the last time he saw her, he would have the most compelling of pictures to carry with him to his grave. He brushed away that one curl always dangling at her cheek, savored the silk of it on his fingers, and leaned down. He meant only to touch his lips to hers, but it wasn't enough. Not for forever. Deepening the kiss, he held her tight and prayed she could taste something beyond the goodbye in his embrace.