Gwyneth Atlee (5 page)

The last thing Yvette meant to do was speak up for some Yankee.
She was heading toward the safety of her stateroom when she heard
loud voices. She barely recognized the young man who had earlier
introduced himself as Gabriel Davis when a wild-eyed scalawag spat
into his face. Yvette hadn’t heard their confrontation, but she saw in a
trice that her Mr. Davis was both outnumbered and a far better sort
than this ruffian. When Gabriel understandably swung at the man, his
attacker grabbed his wrist and slung him headlong into a cabin wall.

No one paid her any heed. Gabriel struggled to rise before
collapsing, but two men quickly hauled him to his feet. In the
warm light of the lantern, she saw dark rivulets of blood dripping
through his blond hair.

Just when she thought the two men had decided to redeem themselves
by helping their unconscious victim, the one who’d started the incident
hauled Gabriel closer to the rail. Her stomach clenched in horror as
she realized the man meant to throw him overboard.

An image flashed through Yvette’s mind: Marie, black hair waving
in the water, where she’d been discarded as if her life meant nothing.
She couldn’t let this happen to this man, wouldn’t let this happen to
another family.

The other fellow, a bit shorter and fuller in the face, grasped Gabriel
by the shoulder and hesitated.
“Much as he deserves it, you can’t just pitch him over. A man can’t
swim in his condition—”
“You think I give a damn?” The man’s dark gaze slid to lock with
Yvette’s and then back, as if she weren’t worthy of consideration.
“It’s murder, and I won’t be a party to it. I-I know his people.
They’ve already lost one son.”
The black-haired devil shoved his friend aside. “He shoulda died
already. God knows he’s got it comin’. And there ain’t a fellow here
who’ll say a damn thing if our runner-friend happens to slip off the
side, all accidental-like.”
Yvette scanned the men crowded around and realized with horrifying
certainty that the man was right. None would meet her eye. Several
turned their backs, perhaps pretending that if they didn’t see this
abomination, it would not exist. Did this bully so frighten them that
they meant to allow him to commit murder?
Outrage forced her to step forward. They might all be Yankees,
the same that she had wished dead, but she refused to stand by
idly and witness the death of a young man who’d treated her
kindly.
“I told you once, unhand him.” She said the words loudly,
hoping that a guard would hear and come to investigate. She
might be a Southerner, but she was also both a lady and a paying
passenger. Those two distinctions earned her the right to expect
protection.
She could hear her blood rush in her ears, and though she had to
struggle to control her shaking, she did not turn away. Wisely or not,
she was involved now, and she could not force herself to run.
“Only the basest of cowards would kill a helpless man. If you try to
do him further harm, I shall scream. I shall scream, and then I’ll tell
everyone who’ll listen just what mischief you intend.”
Several faces stared at her with expressions colored by a mixture of
wariness and disbelief.
The black-haired ruffian pinned her with a fierce glare, apparently
expecting her to burst into hysterical tears or, better yet, collapse into
a swoon. Yvette rolled her eyes and sighed in feigned impatience,
praying all the while that he could not hear her pounding heart.
She held her ground, her stubbornness honed by years spent
battling older brothers. Several men shifted uncomfortably, and
the fellow who’d been holding Mr. Davis’s shoulder spoke up
once again.
“You heard the lady, Deming. Let him go—at least for now.”
By supplying her with the name, the shorter man ended the standoff.
She could now use it to report this incident, and she could tell that
Deming knew it, too. So instead of tossing Gabriel’s limp form
overboard, Deming dumped him at her feet and spat on him again.
“You want the runner so bad, you can have him,” he told her as he
turned on his heel. Trailing a stream of curses against both Gabriel’s
cowardice and her lack of womanly virtues, he shoved and swore his
way through the crowd.
Yvette gazed down at the heap of bleeding Yankee lying at her feet.
She had him now, all right.
But what in heaven’s name was she going to do with him?

“Major Fidler, might I have a word with you about the conduct of
your men?” Captain Mason asked.
Fidler, the officer in charge of the prisoners, looked distinctly
annoyed. A paroled prisoner himself, the major had been one of several
men who’d complained about the overcrowding before the
Sultana
left
Vicksburg. The hollow-cheeked man had proclaimed himself “quite
unimpressed” with Mason’s reassurances. This evening, his uniform
hung wrinkled on his gaunt frame, and exhausted shadows formed
dark smudges beneath his eyes.
Nevertheless, Fidler followed Mason into the pilothouse.
“I’m very concerned about the way the men are moving from one
side to the other every time another steamboat passes or we near a
town,” Captain Mason began. “With this sort of weight on top, sudden
shifting could capsize us or cause a boiler failure. This behavior must
be stopped immediately.”
Major Fidler pursed his lips, and his eyes grew as cold as chips of
flint. To his credit, however, he did not remind Mason of his earlier
objections. Nor did he mention the conditions, which Mason understood
were less than desirable.
“I’ll speak to them,” Fidler agreed, his voice sounding as tired as he
appeared. “All we want is to get home safely. God knows, we deserve
it after what we’ve suffered.”
Fidler left the pilothouse, and Captain Mason gazed out over the
dark mass of prisoners blanketing the hurricane deck. Prisoners who,
with their sheer weight, could destroy the steamboat and everyone
inside it.
“All we want is to get home safely,” Fidler had said.
“Amen to that, Major,” whispered Mason. But his true desire
was more modest still. Not home, but the prisoners’ river destination,
Cairo, Illinois, beckoned like a lodestone pulling at a compass needle.
It was that town and not his home or his wife, Mary, that J. Cass
Mason thought of when he finally whispered, “It’s all that I
want, too.”

Gabe felt as if someone had dropped a cannonball onto his head.
Experimentally, he moved it, only to find that his neck, too, throbbed
ferociously from the jarring impact. He tried to force his eyes to focus,
his mind to put together the jumbled images that skipped along its
surface like an artfully tossed stone. One after another, he saw
Matthew’s face, the mangled bodies of dead soldiers, the rows of shallow
graves he’d helped to dig, and then a steamboat, the
Sultana,
almost as
radiant a vision as the dark-haired beauty he’d met while waiting to
come aboard.

In stark contrast, the ugly memory of Silas Deming rushed at him,
followed by the recollection of the man’s harsh words and the solid
impact that had quickly followed. Shortest fight he’d ever been in,
Gabe thought, somewhat abashed.

He was fortunate he hadn’t been killed, he realized, before deciding
that the same fickle luck had caused him to encounter one man among
hundreds who’d be hell-bent on hurting him. But where was Deming
now? For that matter, where was he?

As his vision cleared, a solid shelf of wood appeared about two and
a half feet above him. Gingerly, he turned his head until he could take
in the narrow confines of the small room he found himself in— the two
doors of the stateroom, the lamp above the table. Apparently, he was lying
in a lower berth. Across from him, a young woman sat in the room’s
lone chair, her fingers absently fluffing the fur near a tiny kitten’s ear.

A woman? He groaned, frustrated in his attempts to comprehend
all that had happened. Only then did he realize she was the same
woman he’d seen on the wharf boat earlier.

“What . . . ?” he began, scarcely guessing which question was
attempting to emerge from his confusion. “How . . . ? How did I
get here?”

She frowned, as if his appearance were an unpleasant surprise to
her. “My own foolishness, I’m afraid. Do you remember what that
horrible, wild man did?”

She nodded, and the lamplight gleamed off her black hair, now
uncovered. A few wavy strands had escaped a bun to frame her face.
“You’re lucky that you
can
think after that crack on the skull. Good
thing you Yankees are so intractably hardheaded.”

“That explains the way I feel, but it still doesn’t tell me why I’m
here.” He attempted a smile despite a swirl of nausea. “I’m not complaining, mind you. I figured I’d end up in a box instead.”

“Or as bait for catfish. That man meant to throw you overboard!”
Her voice rose on a tide of indignation. “And if I hadn’t come along,
those others would have let him. I’d thought you Yankees always
stuck together.”

“I hear a Michigan judge gave him two choices: join the army or
serve time. You Rebels saved us housing on that Deming fellow,
throwing him in prison.”

“But surely someone should have stood up for you against that
criminal, someone besides me.”
Of course, no one else had helped him. Gabriel closed his eyes tightly
and wondered if he’d ever live down a simple act of—what?
Kindness? Cowardice? Even after six months, he still felt uncertain of
the answer.
When he looked at her again, her name rippled across his mind.
Eve
Alexander,
she had said in that Southern accent he’d come to hate so
much. Her words sounded silken, the same way those dark tendrils
that framed her face looked.
“So why did you, Miss Alexander? What was one less Yankee
to you?”
“It seemed a shame to drop the only half-decent Northerner I’ve
met headfirst into the Mississippi.”
“How’d I get in here, alone with you?”
The black-and-white kitten curled into a fluffy ball on Eve’s lap.
She lifted her chin defiantly, as if she’d detected censure in his
words. “I was not about to waste my grand gesture by letting those
ruffians toss you in the river the moment my back was turned, so I
shamed two of them into bringing you in here. However, if you’re concerned about the propriety of such an action, I’m certain we can call
Mr. Deming back.”
He laughed, though his throbbing skull made him instantly regret
it. “You misunderstand me. I’m very grateful, but I’m also confused.
I’ve never had a lady save my life before, especially not a Southern
one. I’m not too clear on the etiquette.”
She tried to pinion him with an indignant glare, but the amusement in her hazel eyes dashed it all to pieces. “I believe I read an
essay on the very subject in Miss Edith Willington’s new book,
The
Right Way to Live.”
“Was it tucked between the chapters on ‘Maintaining One’s
Complexion’ and ‘Evil Thoughts Toward Others,’ chapter twentyseven, ‘Awkward and Unseemly Rescues?’ “ Gabe asked.
The bow of her mouth trembled until finally she gave way to
laughter.
“I have two sisters who live by Miss Willington’s edicts,” Gabe
confessed. “I’m afraid I spent a lot of happy moments mocking them
for what they called ‘developing their standards.’ “
“I must confess, I’ve never put a great store by what the lady had to
say,” Eve told him, “much to my sister and mother’s chagrin. I
brought you here because . . . it seemed best at the time.”
“Did you send for an officer or guard?”
“I-I didn’t feel that, ah, under the circumstances, that action would
be safe for you, either.”
Something in the way her gaze slid away from his convinced Gabe
she’d heard at least some of the conversation on the cabin deck. With
the realization, he felt a rush of shame so painful that he almost
wished Deming had tossed him overboard. Surely, drowning couldn’t
be worse than bearing this Southern woman’s pity.
“I was no deserter,” he insisted.
She said nothing in response, but her eyes looked expectant, as if
she guessed there must be more. And in that expectation, Gabe
dared to hope for something. Atonement? No, she could not offer
such a thing. But perhaps the throbbing pressure in his skull was his
long-silent explanation seeking its release.
Why not tell her? To her, he was just another Yankee, one she imagined
a great coward, from what he guessed she’d heard. What could possibly
make her think worse of him now?
“I did run once, in a battle,” he began, seeking only to ease the
pain by giving the true tale a voice. He searched her face, looking for
some sign that she would stop him. But she leaned forward ever so
slightly, as children do when an old uncle tells a frightening story by
the hearth.
At least she had not recoiled. For that he felt more gratitude than
for what she’d done to save his life. Before she could change her mind
and leave or cry for help, he continued. “It happened in Tennessee,
about six months ago. By then, the Confederates must have known
the end was coming. But I’ll give them this. They kept on fighting,
fielding every soldier they could find. They must have been running
low on fit men, though. After a while, we were fighting graybeards.
We were fighting boys as well. Kids young enough to cry when they
felt homesick for their mamas.”
A dim shade rose before his eyes, his brother, Matthew. Matthew
laughing, the sounds of it mingling with the thin splintering of the ice
beneath his feet. Unconsciously, Gabe reached out as if this time he
could grab him. As if he hadn’t been too far away.
“We gave the war our all, Mr. Davis,” Eve told him, her voice colored
by a pride undiminished by defeat. “We’ll always have the knowledge
that our beliefs, however wrong you people think them, have been
paid for with our blood.”
“Even in the blood of children,” Gabe said. “It’s a damned steep
price for pride.”
“There
is
no price too high for self-respect, sir, and I will thank you
to watch your language in my presence.”
He focused on her haughtiness, the contempt he imagined building
in her. Only by doing so could he force himself to spill the entire story,
especially the parts he’d been unable to tell Seth.
“There
is,”
he told her, “or I should say there
was
for me. Before
I became an infantry soldier, I spent several years designing and
testing different cannon. I was so proud of those gleaming bronze
Napoleons with my family name stamped on their barrels. Proud
of their beauty and efficiency until I saw the mangled corpses on
both sides.”
He could still see them when he closed his eyes, bodies pulverized
by grapeshot, pulped by exploding shells. So stubbornly, he kept
both eyes open to try to keep the disquieting past at bay, at least for
now. Later, when the only sounds around him were the snores of
sleeping men and the splashing of the paddle wheels, he knew that
he would see it all once more. Once more and forever, every time he
tried to sleep.
“The bodies looked the same. Didn’t matter if they hailed from
Massachusetts or Kentucky, from Florida or Texas. Didn’t matter what
color their skin or whether they ate Boston beans or black-eyed peas
before the war. They all bled the same.”
He could see the disdain fading in her eyes, followed quickly by the
dawning of comprehension about what this war had really been. Not
some grand adventure made more noble through its inconveniences
and sacrifice, but all the carnage, all the waste.
“Thank God I never had to fire any heavy weapons,” Gabe continued. “Pulling the trigger of my Henry rifle was more than enough.
Sixteen shots, that Henry had. Sixteen chances to crack open another
man’s chest or spew his brains all over his comrades or tear off one of
his legs. But when I was called upon to fire, I still did it. To the very
best of my ability. I killed my share of Rebels. Sometimes I wanted to
just kill them all so I could hurry up and be quit of this place. That’s
all most of us wanted, to get finished and go home.”
Eve refused to meet his gaze now. Her mouth had flattened to a
taut, grim line. But she did not get up and run shrieking from the
room, as so many women would have. Even if she had, though, he
might have gone on talking just to free the words that had lingered so
long near the graveyard of his soul.
“I might have finished up a hero, the way I shot those Rebs. Might
have.” Gabe shook his head. “If we hadn’t gotten backed into a tight
spot. We were close enough to bayonet each other instead of shooting.
I was fighting hard, too, because I knew the minute that I stopped,
some Johnny would run me through. I didn’t want to end up all
in tatters like those corpses, didn’t want my family to have to bury
its last son. I think I was wrong, though, not to realize there
are
worse things than dying. Maybe you were right about the price of
self-respect.”
The kitten hopped off her lap and trotted toward him, its neck
craning with cautious curiosity. Keeping its back paws on the floor,
it lifted the front ones to the bunk’s edge near his shoulder and
stared at him, its green eyes blazing.
Gabe barely saw the kitten but wouldn’t have touched it, anyway.
Tiny and appealing as it might be, it remained a cat.
“You said you didn’t want your family to bury its last son. Did your
brother, or perhaps I should say brothers, die in the war?” Eve asked.
Her voice surprised him, she’d been quiet for so long. He shook his
head in answer.
“Matthew drowned two years before the first shots. I was there. I
saw him break through the river ice. I went in, too, thinking I could
find him. But it was as if he’d fallen into a hole leading to the center of
the earth. I never saw his face again, except . . .”
“Except?”
“Except after it became so pale and bloated I didn’t even know
for sure it was my brother. And then again, that last time, my last
battle.” He looked up at her, trying to mask his desperation for
acceptance with a challenge. “I came eye to eye with a Rebel boy
with Matthew’s face.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Dared he hope they were born of understanding? Or did she still pity him, or worse yet, fear he was insane?
He couldn’t care about that. He had to get this all out, for he sensed
he’d never summon the courage to tell his tale again.
“Of course, it couldn’t have been Matthew. He’d been dead for
years. But at that moment, I-I saw my brother. It was an awful shock.”
He paused and asked himself again whether his mind manufactured
that vision later to excuse what happened next. No, it could not be. He
remembered it too clearly. Matthew’s pale blond hair, his eyes flashing
with what looked for all the world like recognition.
He shuddered with the memory of it, still absolutely vivid despite
the months that had passed since then. A perfectly clear moment that
would last him all his life.
“I almost shot him, anyway. Just a reflex to keep myself alive, like
vomiting a bellyful of poison. But my finger froze on that trigger, and
then my mind— I’m not sure what went through it. I’ve tried to remember,
but—” He shook his head, despairing of the task. “All I know is what
the others told me. I threw down my rifle, and I ran like hell.
“By the time I realized what I’d done, I was wandering among a
lot of pine trees. I could hear the echoes of a few last shots far in the
distance. But by the time I found my unit, the Rebels had retreated.
When I reported to camp, my mates had all heard how I’d run. They
turned their backs to me.”
He remembered the stark desolation of that moment, the realization
that he’d betrayed his fellow soldiers and not just himself. “I went to
the captain and reported in for discipline.”
“No coward would have done that,” Eve told him. Her voice was
adamant, leaving no room for polite half-truths. Though he’d
thought her strident earlier, he found he liked the fact that she said
what she felt.
As if it agreed with its mistress, the kitten hopped onto the berth
beside him. Gabe summoned the strength to sit and scooped the ball
of fluff into his hands.
“This coward
did,”
Gabe said as he set the kitten on the floor.
“That was the problem. I expected to be drummed out, sent home in
disgrace. It was a fitting punishment. My father . . .”
Shaking his head, he closed his mouth against what his father
would have done,
would
do, when he returned to Ohio.
“No one wanted to hear why I left the battle. Every friend I had
turned on me. Enough to listen when Silas Deming came up with an
idea. Instead of waiting for the captain to properly disgrace me, the
men could drum me out themselves, run me through the Southern
line. The Rebels would take care of me, he reckoned.”
“Is that how you were captured?”
He nodded. “I tried my best to make them kill me, but it didn’t
happen that way. Without a weapon, I wasn’t even threat enough
to shoot.”
“Did you . . . did you ever see the boy again? The one who so
reminded you of your brother?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I didn’t, but I swear he was real. I know
it. I can still see every feature, every freckle on that young man’s face.
And I still . . . I still wonder if somehow it could be . . .”
She leaned forward just an inch more, and the room seemed to close
in around him. He’d only have to shift a bit and his knee would graze
hers. He looked into her face as if to memorize it. She’d saved his life
today—perhaps in more respects than one. Already he felt the pain
bleeding out from the empty socket the truth had left. But the pain and
blood felt cleansing somehow, as if they were preparing him for the
chance to heal.
He might never repay her for what she’d done today, but he
would carry her beautiful face with him, cast it into crystal as he had
his brother’s. As his mind took in Eve’s delicate features, he grew
increasingly conscious of the astonishing fact that he was alone
inside this room with a very desirable woman. Awareness stole over
him, and he felt his heartbeat race.
His gaze lingered for a long moment on her hazel eyes. Long
enough to see them darken, just as summer clouds will to presage a
violent storm.