Gwyneth Atlee (13 page)

As Capt. Darien Russell stood near the steamboat’s gangway, he
made no attempt to halt the exodus of former prisoners from the
Sultana.
Instead, he watched with a mixture of fascination and disgust
as the dregs of the Union army loped or limped, depending on their
condition, onto the wharf boat and then the cobblestones beyond it.
No order at all to them, he noted, except to disobey.

He was glad he had decided to do nothing to stop the departing
men. In their minds, they were no longer military, as if in the wake of
Lee’s surrender all obligations had dissolved. They would have
certainly ignored his orders, just as they had ignored the orders of
more familiar leaders. Some might have mocked him, and at his
current level of frustration, he scarcely trusted himself to keep his
temper reined.

His temper. It had always been his loaded gun and mockery its
surest trigger. As the hours crept by, he thought of how it had caused
his academy to fail. Although he’d loved to lecture, he could never
handle boys. Remembering their sniggers still made his hands fist into
hammers, his hands, which had not learned from the fateful blow they
dealt to William Charles.

Certainly, he’d boxed boys’ ears before—and often. But when he’d
caught Will mimicking his lecture in the corridor in tones so pompous
and speech so flowery, when he’d heard the others howl with mirth,
Darien—quite literally—saw red. A bloody veil of rage obscured both
his vision and his reason, and before he could regain control, his fists
pummeled the boy, again and again.

That time there had been no neat precision; there had been blood.
Blood streaming from the boy’s ears as William lay unconscious on his
classroom floor. The other boys stood motionless, mute with disbelief
and horror. It was only by the grace of God the child didn’t die. But he
would never hear again from his left ear, the one that Darien’s right
fist had struck.

Darien’s temper had cost him his school in the end, along with
every penny he’d ever sunk into it. Every last cent of his inheritance.
William’s parents had accepted an apology and a modest settlement in
lieu of filing any criminal or civil charges. But when they withdrew
their son, others followed, many others, until Darien had no choice
but to close his academy. Close it and forever afterward listen to his
wife harangue him for his failure.

Even in the military his temper hobbled him. He could no
more abide the laughter of men than boys, and his harsh brand
of discipline inspired muttering far more often than heroics. His
superiors explained he had no gift for leadership. A man of his
intelligence and background might well be a colonel by this
time, or even a general. But Darien instead was a captain serving
generals, seeing that their food was hot, even on the battlefield,
and that their orders were delivered. In other words, despite his
rank and education, despite the grandness of his ideas, he
functioned as a lackey.

Until New Orleans taught him to use the role to his advantage.
Until he saw how others prospered and decided to drink from the
same well. He felt a surge of pride at the thought of how he had
manipulated wealthy men so deftly. So deftly that the last one
handed him his lovely daughter as if she were a bright bow atop
the gift of the man’s fortune. And if, at the end, he hadn’t quite succeeded
in separating old Augeron from his wealth, he had at least enjoyed
despoiling Marie and the heady feelings of deception and revenge
upon his harpy of a wife.

Darien smiled, thinking of his brilliance. It helped to pass the time
far more agreeably than dwelling on his failures. He’d leave this war
a very rich man, never again to fear his Constance—or the noose. All
he had to do was silence Yvette Augeron, to make certain she never
left this steamboat.

Jacob decided to avoid the long line at the Soldiers’ Home in favor
of trying to buy food elsewhere. He wandered down a seedy-looking
side street near the riverfront. He’d heard someone say there was a
rivermen’s saloon there, but nothing about the dilapidated wooden
structures looked inviting. Jacob had just about decided to turn back
when he spotted a sign hanging above the doorway of a severely
leaning structure. Ma Abbot’s had been painted in crude, uneven letters,
as if a child or a drunk had done the job.

Jacob had misgivings about entering the place. Someone had used
wooden props to keep the saloon from keeling over. Strips of paint
peeled from weathered outer walls so full of knotholes that anyone
who took the notion could easily peer inside. Neither the rectangle of
dingy yellow light nor the out-of-tune piano music coming through
the open door seemed inviting in the least, but Jacob Fuller was not a
man to turn away from anything over a few hairs rising along the back
of his neck.

Instead, he raked his fingers through his thick curls, as if to straighten
them, before striding into the saloon. The moment that he did, the
odors struck him. Smoke and liquor combined with stale sweat and old
grease. But something more enticing overpowered those unpleasant
scents, something that smelled of baking bread and maybe onions. His
stomach rumbled, oblivious to the suspicious, dark-eyed gazes of the
trio of rough-looking men standing by the bar. In a corner, another pair
stopped laughing at his entrance. Only the piano player, who had his
back turned to the door, continued as he had been, plinking out a badly
played rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

Jacob approached the bar. A hooknosed man stood behind it, gazing
at him over the paunch of an enormous belly. Unlike the patrons, his
smile offered welcome.
“Whatcha have to drink, soldier?”
“I’m more interested in food right now. What’s that I smell cooking?”
The smile stretched into a grin. “My wife—Ma’s—cookin’ meat

Instead, the bartender sold him a sack of meat pies and a half-full
jar of pickled eggs. But when Jacob dug into his small cache of coins,
he sensed eyes devouring his every movement, eyes that hungered for
money more than food.

Four soldiers from the
Sultana
burst in noisily, all shouting orders
for whiskey. One was an enormously tall fellow that Jacob had seen
aboard the steamer. This close, he reckoned the fellow might be seven
feet tall.

Happy for the distraction, Jacob took his leave. But as he did so, out
of the corner of his eye he saw the three men who’d been standing at
the bar walk out behind him. The same three men who’d been watching
him so carefully when he’d paid for the food.

Gabriel and Yvette stood in shadow in a spot on the main deck that
had been vacated by a group of men who’d gone into Memphis. Yvette
took Gabe’s hand and squeezed it, sending a brief but powerful current
of desire through his entire body. A current he could no longer ignore.
She meant to leave him now, forever. He did not delude himself into
thinking that, once parted, he’d ever again find her.

Apparently, she was thinking along different lines, for she released
his hand to point out Captain Russell ahead of them. He stood watching
the gangway, his back to them, his posture rigidly alert.

“Maybe he’ll give up soon,” Yvette wished aloud. In her borrowed
outfit, she looked like a drummer boy. But only if she stayed out of the
light, where her delicate features and the sweet curves of her body
would not give her away.

“I hope . . .” Gabe began, not knowing how to voice his thoughts
without angering her. But the passing moments beat away at him like
eagles’ wings. There was no time to woo her gently, to gradually chip
away at her resistance. No time to waste on doubts. If he wanted her,
he’d have to say so now, while there was still some fragment of
a chance.

“Got no use for a goddamn coward,”
Silas Deming’s voice reminded
him. Deming had been wrong when he’d said it, but now the statement
urged Gabe into action. His heart told him that if he listened to the
voice of fear instead, or even to Seth Harris’s voice of reason, he would
regret it to the end of his days. That his body might yet inhabit the
earth, but the last vestige of his wounded soul would die a slow death
of self-loathing.

So he risked putting into words what he’d been thinking. “I hope he
doesn’t
leave.”
Yvette glared at him. “Do you
want
me to get caught? After all
you’ve done to help me?”
He shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s, well . . . I want
you,
Yvette. If
I had time, I’d do this right. I’d court you slow and proper, like the
lady that you are. But you’re about to leave now, leave for somewhere
I can’t help you. About to go where I can’t ever hope to hold you in
my arms again.”
Her eyes rounded, and she blinked rapidly. Perhaps she blinked
back tears, but in the poor light, he could not be certain.
“You feel it, too, don’t you?” he asked her. “There’s something
strong between us, something we might never feel again. I could love
you, Yvette. No, I may as well risk everything and tell you, I
do
love
you—now. I love the way you fit against my body. I love the way you
listen and you talk. I love the way you take a stand, whether it’s
against a thieving officer or against a bunch of soldiers about to kill an
unconscious enemy. You put what you believe on the line, the same
way the best soldiers have, on both sides of this war. I don’t only love
you, I
respect
you for it, and that’s a combination you don’t come by
every day.”
He paused and took a breath. God, how he wished she’d say something
in response that would stop him from making a damned fool of himself.
But as the seconds stretched into a brittle silence, he decided that having
gone so far, he had little else to lose.
“Don’t go, Yvette. Come with me, to Ohio. I don’t intend to stay
there. I mean to start a new life afterwards, in Oregon, where Union
and Confederacy are just words from the papers, where a man’s skill
is as good as money in the bank. It’ll be rough going for a while, but I
mean to make a living forging metal, anything but cannon. I won’t
take a damned dime on tools made to kill men.”
“Gabe,” she breathed, “what are you saying?”
“I’m asking you to make a new start, as my wife.”
“Your wife . . . ?” The words were choked, the voice tight. “No one
has ever . . . ever made me feel so . . .”
When words failed her, she put down the basket that contained
Lafitte. Rising, she then draped her arms around his neck and leaned
into his embrace. Gabe felt such joy, such expanding relief, that he did
not hesitate to enfold her in a kiss so genuine, so generous, that it
made his body ache with need.
Yvette’s cap slid off, and her dark waves cascaded nearly to her
waist. Coming to his senses, Gabe broke away to retrieve the kepi and
hand it back to her.
“We can’t do that again,” he warned as she tucked her hair back
into hiding. He grimaced at the thought of what might happen if he
were seen kissing what appeared to be a drummer boy. They’d both be
catfish bait for certain.
“No . . . we can’t,” Yvette said, and from the sadness in her voice, he
knew she meant forever, not just now.
He had opened up his heart to her for nothing. He had played his
finest hand—and lost.

As men unloaded a hogshead of sugar, Darien Russell heard a
crewman’s voice.
“That’s near the last of it. Blow the whistle now and give them boys
a chance to get back on board afore we shove off. They’ll be wantin’ to
get home, and no mistake.”
A warning jolted him back to full awareness, an instinct that Yvette
was somewhere close by, waiting for the passing hours to lull him into
inattention. Waiting, perhaps, for him to give up and return to the
main cabin to bed down for the night.
He could almost hear her thinking that now would be her best
chance to flee the steamer. The day had long since faded into
moonless darkness, broken only by lit torches. Faces would be
hard to distinguish by the dim, flickering light, although with so
few women about, he didn’t think he’d have much trouble
discerning her.
Darien smoothed his hair and beard to hide his anticipation.
From the looks of Yvette’s stateroom, which he’d checked before
they’d tied up, she’d fled in a hurry, leaving nearly everything
behind. Everything except the damning letter he suspected she still
had. Surely she would try to leave before the
Sultana
resumed its
northward journey.
Perhaps she’d spotted him. He’d thought he was well hidden, here
in the shadow of the cabin deck, but maybe she had seen him and been
frightened away. He moved to the opposite side of the gangway, into
another dim spot. Hopefully, she’d see only the place he had vacated
and think he’d given up.
The steamboat’s whistle cut through the sounds of conversation, of
singing from somewhere on the decks above. This was her last chance
then—and his last chance to catch her this evening, as he’d sworn.

Despite Jacob’s sense that he was being followed, their attack had
still surprised him. Maybe it was only the way he had been raised, but
he always felt a cold ripple of shock when someone meant—on
purpose—to do him bodily harm. Someone that he didn’t even know,
that he’d given no excuse whatsoever for the action. Maybe that was
why the whole idea of this war had made so little sense to him. Jacob
could never see the reason why so many folks would want to venture
so far from their homes to hurt and kill each other.

These thoughts spun through his head as he was coming to. Or
what was left of his head, anyway. Gingerly, he touched a throbbing
spot. His fingers came away coated with warm, sticky blood.