His Heart's Revenge (The Marshall Brothers Series, Book 2) (8 page)

"Don't remind me," he said feelingly. "Cut away."

When she was done she reached in her apron pocket and handed Logan part of a mirror about the size of a gold piece. "You do the beard and mustache," she said, once he approved. "Trust me, Mr. Marshall, you'll be better off clean-shaven."

Logan did not doubt it. He eagerly accepted the razor. Twenty minutes later he hardly recognized the man who stared back at him in the mirror. It wasn't merely that he did not look like the man he had lived with these past nineteen months. More troubling was the fact that he didn't look like the man he had been before that.

"You look old," said Mary Catherine.

Logan returned the mirror. His smile was wry. "You don't mince words, do you?"

"It's not so bad," she said. "You will look the same way when you're truly old. Even when you're thirty."

Logan nearly choked on his own breath. "My God, you're quite the flatterer."

Ignoring him, Mary Catherine picked up the things she had been using and dropped them in her apron pocket. What she hadn't said, what she wouldn't say, was that Logan Marshall was terribly handsome now and would be for the rest of his life. She doubted that she would be alone in thinking that. Even Aunt Peggy, before she filled his behind with buckshot, could be counted on to remark that Logan was a fine figure of a man.

"Let's go into the loft," she said. "I can make some kind of bed for you there, block it off with a few bales to give you some privacy and keep it warmer. Later, when I come back with your supper, I'll bring Uncle Martin's greatcoat."

"You're being very kind," he said in a low voice. "I'm not sure why. Earlier, when you showed me the graves, I thought you were going to send me away. You haven't even asked what I'm doing here, or where I've been. And, according to you, I'm the enemy."

"You are the enemy. As for where you've been—I don't care—and if you don't get up in the loft and get dressed, it doesn't matter why you've come, because you are going to die here. I would rather not have to explain that to Aunt Peg. She wouldn't understand consorting with a Yankee, even one who was—"

Logan waited, but Mary Catherine did not finish her sentence. "Was what?" he prompted.

"Was a frog prince," she said quietly as she left the tack room. The memory, the poignant reminder of innocence lost, created an ache in Mary Catherine's heart. She glanced behind her and saw Logan slowly stand. After a brief hesitation he followed silently in her wake.

Logan was sleeping again when she returned with supper and the greatcoat. This time she did not poke him in the ribs. Laying the greatcoat over his shoulders, Mary Catherine knelt beside him. She placed the basket of food near his face where the aroma of chicken and dumplings would catch his attention. He was snoring lightly, and she turned him gently on his side just as she did for her aunt. He wrinkled his nose once. Twice. The snoring stopped. Mary Catherine touched three fingers to Logan's forehead. He was warm, but not as hot as he had been before. Perhaps it was not pneumonia after all.

Mary Catherine unwound the plait of hair at her back while she waited for Logan to wake. She combed out her hair with her fingers, examined the ends for splits and breaks, and began to rebraid it. When she finished, she was surprised to see that Logan had been watching her—probably for some time. He was staring at her hands. Self-consciously, for they were certainly not beautiful, soft, or idle hands, Mary Catherine hid them in the folds of her dress. The action seemed to shake Logan out of his reverie.

Without preamble, he asked, "What happened to the soldier who raped Megan?"

"I shot him."

"He's dead?"

"Aunt Peggy only taught me one way to shoot."

"I see," he said thoughtfully. The softness was gone from her, he realized. If he had aged, then so had she, perhaps more so. He, at least, had had a childhood, an adolescence. Mary Catherine seemed to have leaped from child to adult. He wondered how many of the hard edges were Colonel Allen's responsibility.

"I think your fever's down. Are you feeling better?"

He sat up, stretched, and reached for the basket. "I'm feeling tolerably well." The greatcoat slipped off one shoulder and Mary Catherine reached across him and adjusted it. "I know it's because you don't want me dying here, but thank you just the same."

Feeling that he was trying to goad her, Mary Catherine didn't respond. "I can't stay and I can't come again until morning."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"But you do understand that you cannot stay here long," she said anxiously. "My aunt will get suspicious eventually."

"I understand. What day is today?"

"Thursday."

"Then I'll be out of your hair on Monday. I promise." He stabbed a dumpling with his fork and began eating.

"Where will you go?"

"Home."

In spite of herself, she was interested. "That's New York, isn't it?"

"The city, yes."

"What will you do there?"

"Work for my father. He owns and publishes the
Chronicle
."

"Is that what you really want to do?"

"Yes. It's something I really never had to think about. I've always known I wanted to be a newspaperman. Now Christian—he's my older brother—he despises the business. Wants to be an artist." He paused to swallow his food and take a swig from the flask Mary Catherine had so generously provided. The whiskey burned the whole way down. It felt wonderful.

"I thought you were a photographer."

"I am. Christian got me interested. I want to make photography an important part of the
Chronicle
."

"Things haven't changed for you, have they?" she asked. "I mean, not truly changed. You are going to go home and the paper is waiting for you, your family is waiting for you, you probably have a sweetheart who is waiting for you, and in a few months it is all going to be behind you."

Logan's eyes had narrowed as he listened to her. "If it will be behind me, it's because I will have put it there."

"It will be as if it never happened," she said, not realizing she was treading on dangerous ground. "One morning someone will wake you by poking you in the ribs, and you won't even budge. You won't remember why it bothered you once upon a time."

"Get out of here," he said.

"You won't even—"

"Mary Catherine." There was grit in his voice. "Leave me."

Belatedly she realized that Logan was angry. What should it matter, she asked herself. Everything she said was true. He would return to the city and forget all about the war, forget all about her and her family. She got to her feet, brushed strands of hay from her dress, and started down the ladder.

"Katy?"

One more rung down and she would have been out of his view. She could have ignored him then. But there was something in his manner when he called her Katy that drew her attention. She paused, poised between rungs, and raised her eyes.

"I don't have a sweetheart," he said.

She didn't know which she hated more, the fact that she blushed to the roots of her hair or the fact that he laughed and the laughter had a hint of cruelty in it.

Friday morning Mary Catherine was prepared to give Logan her coldest shoulder. She practiced expressions in her mirror that were guaranteed to cut so deeply they would draw blood. Confident of her ability to ignore him, Mary Catherine entered the barn and did her chores before she deigned to climb to the loft.

Her attitude amused him. All her gestures were just a shade overdone so that it was difficult to take her seriously. He wondered if she had been reading that shrew story again.

"You're laughing at me," she said, her eyes accusing.

"I am. You are so obvious."

"Yankee bastard."

"Yankee, true enough. My mother and father would be surprised to hear me called the second thing you named."

He was still laughing at her. Mary Catherine forgot what she had practiced. She left the loft in a huff and later that night had a serious discussion with her aunt about tolerance and forgiveness and anger. The conversation bewildered Peggy, but Mary Catherine felt better.

On Saturday she could see a difference in Logan. What color there was in his complexion was natural, not put there by the fever. He sat straighter, looked stronger. Climbing up and down the ladder didn't wind him. She brought a deck of cards from the house and they played poker with straw sticks.

"What does your aunt think you're doing in here?" Logan asked. His eyes shifted from his cards to Mary Catherine's face. She was concentrating on her hand and biting on her lower lip at the same time. Her eyes were shaded by long lashes, and her cheeks were stained pink by the reflection of light on her red shawl. A red grosgrain ribbon kept her hair loosely confined at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a gray dress with a high collar and little in the way of ornamentation. She looked very demure. He thought she was cheating. "Did you hear me? I asked you a question."

"I know. I'm thinking." Her mouth pursed to one side as she caught the inside of her cheek between her teeth. "Two cards, please."

Logan gave her two. "So?"

"She thinks I'm reciting. I'll see your three straws and raise you one."

"Reciting what?" He matched her wager and showed her his cards. He had three of a kind.

"Full house," she said. "Sevens over fives. I win." She paused a beat. "Again."

"I'm glad you weren't in Libby Prison. I'd have lost my shirt to you."

Here was something she didn't want to know. Yet she heard herself asking, "You were in Libby?"

Logan nodded. He gathered the cards and began shuffling.

She told herself she didn't want to know more. "For how long?"

"Almost since the moment I left you in Washington."

"Oh, God," she said under her breath. "You just got out?"

"Yes."

"They let you out?"

"No, not exactly."

"Oh, God," she said again. "Then you're an escaped prisoner."

"From your tone of voice I take it that's worse than being a Yankee bastard."

"How can you joke about it? You shouldn't have told me this—any of it. Do you think I won't report you?" In the folds of her dress her hands were clenching and unclenching.

Logan dropped the cards and took her by the wrists, stilling her agitated hands. "Katy, what is this?"

Mary Catherine could feel Logan willing her to look at him. She raised her face, thrusting her chin forward in a defiant gesture. It was wasted on Logan. His cool pewter eyes continued to demand an answer. But it was the hint of sadness that held Mary Catherine's attention. She couldn't look away. "It's not right," she said in a low voice. "I shouldn't be hiding you at all. Until you mentioned Libby Prison, I thought you were a deserter. It didn't seem so bad somehow that I was helping you. Knowing what I know now, well, it makes things different."

"Does my help in the past mean so little to you then, Katy?"

"Don't call me that."

Impatient, he gave her hands a little shake. "Does it?" he asked.

She tore her hands away. She reached blindly for the cards and began to collect them. "I never asked for your help. Neither did my mother or Megan."

"I see." His stomach began to knot. He was glad he wasn't holding her hands any longer because his palms were sweating. "I suppose I'm not so proud—I'm asking for yours. I need your silence. If I'm caught, I'll be killed and if I have to go back to prison, I'll die. You agreed I could stay until Monday. Let it stand."

For some time Mary Catherine said nothing. She pulled her eyes away and began dealing the cards. "If I decide to say something before Monday, I'll tell you first. You'll have a chance to leave. That's the most I can promise." Below the loft, Brutus began to whine and the nag shuffled back and forth in her stall. The collie jiggled the ladder as he circled it. Mary Catherine reached for the ladder to steady it and called down to Brutus to be quiet.

"I can hardly believe you're serious," Logan murmured.

"We're on different sides," she said. "We always have been." She glanced up at him. "Now, do you want to play poker?"

Logan slowly picked up his cards. It was difficult to reconcile this young woman in front of him with his memory of the child she had been. The child he had saved from Colonel Allen.

"Ante up," she said.

So it went. The remainder of the afternoon passed as if nothing unpleasant had ever been discussed. Mary Catherine's winning streak continued, but Logan was preoccupied with other matters. He knew that he would have to leave before Monday.

Mary Catherine was halfway down the ladder when Logan called to her in the manner of an afterthought. "When will I see you in the morning?" he asked.

She paused, dangling her foot just above Brutus's yawning mouth. The collie playfully nipped at her shoe. "Not until after church. Morning services are usually over by eleven, but Aunt Peggy likes to talk to everyone. It will be closer to twelve-thirty before I can bring you anything to eat."

"You don't take a carriage to church?"