Gwyneth Atlee (6 page)

As Gabriel sat across from her in the cramped stateroom, Yvette
reminded herself he was just another Yankee. Even so, she dug her
nails into her palms to divert her rising tide of sympathy.

Sympathy for what? For a young man who’d admitted killing Rebel
boys? She thought of the day she and Marie had been enjoying coffee
in Madame Bouchard’s parlor. How proudly Honorée had shown
them the photograph of her husband, Emile, who had gone to war
before the cursed Union took New Orleans. Then, as if her pride had
drawn disaster, Yvette remembered the solemn knock at the front
door, the shriek of Simone, the Bouchards’ mulatto maid. Honorée’s
insistence,
“C’est de la foutaise!
This is nonsense—just a disgraceful
Yankee trick!”

As far as Yvette knew, her friend had not yet admitted that her
husband was truly dead. She could well imagine Honorée turning
away all visitors who might insist she face the truth and not run to
the window to peek out through the curtains every time a rider or
carriage approached. She was too young to be a widow, she’d told
Yvette and Marie. As if that fact could undo his death. As if the
typhoid that killed him could be cured by the empty arms of his
desperate twenty-year-old bride.

If that memory wasn’t enough, Yvette could call forth so many
others. The day their flag had been torn down, her city captured.
Pierre’s shame at returning home minus his right arm. Sweet François,
the youngest of her three brothers, who’d been fighting in Tennessee
when she’d last heard from him, about five months before. And Jules’s
bitterness at being the brother left behind, his heart too weakened by
rheumatic fever to survive the hardships of campaigning.

Juste ciel,
but she could cry a bucket for each of them, her city and
her brothers and her friends. And a river for Marie, perfect, prim
Marie, who’d been misled by a Northerner with manners of silk and
morals of coarse ash.

“What’s wrong?” the Yankee asked her, concern furrowing his
forehead.
She
must
think of him as a Yankee, she admonished herself. Not as
Gabriel Davis or as another young man wounded by this war. As
damaged and as haunted as the men who’d fought on the right side.
“I am counting up the thousand reasons I should hate you,” Yvette
admitted.
“It must be working. You look mad as h— You look very angry.”
She suppressed a smile at the way he’d corrected his language to
appease her. Then she shrugged. “Mostly, I am angry with myself. A
thousand reasons should be enough for anyone. I could recite them
endlessly, but still I listen to your words and wonder. Could it be the
Yankees suffered, too?”
“War causes pain enough to go around, Miss Alexander.”
“This I will concede. Now tell me how it is that you are feeling? I
have washed away the blood, but you have quite a bump there. Shall
I try to find a doctor?”
“No doctors, please. I’m feeling better now.” Something in his tone
suggested he was lying. He didn’t want to draw any more attention to
himself. This she understood, and it brought her to the last, best
reason she must steel herself against his story. She could not afford the
chance he might grow too curious about her.
Still, she hesitated, though she knew she ought to hurry him away.
The hour had grown late, and propriety bespoke one danger if he
lingered, her situation quite another.
She was a fool, she thought, even as she clutched at this opportunity
to talk with someone. She’d been on the run for days, lonely among
strangers, she who had never spent so much as one day totally on her
own. How she missed her family, her friends! Lafitte was some comfort,
for he reminded her of home, but Lafitte could never answer, and she
was deathly tired of their one-sided conversations.
That was why she put aside the thousand reasons she should hate
the Yankee long enough to say to him, “Tell me, Mr. Davis, what happened next to you. I’ve seen stories in the newspapers about
Andersonville. Tell me about that place.”
His polite expression melted into something darker, graver, until he
looked far older than she’d guessed he could be. “I can’t tell you what
that place was. Not without saying things about your fellow Rebels
and using language that you would certainly object to. But you don’t
need the words to understand. You looked around as you boarded
today, didn’t you, Miss Alexander? You must have seen the men with
open sores, the ones without enough meat on them to make a decent
soup bone. Some of them don’t even speak. They gape and drool, and
they make noises, but hunger and sickness have broken their minds.”
“I understand there are places just as evil in the North, but I
must say I don’t condone it,” she told him honestly. When she’d
first read about the prison, she’d supposed the reports mere Yankee
propagandizing, gross exaggeration. But even the tamest version
was a shame unto the South. And Gabriel was right. The withered
bodies of so many men could not be faked.
“But you aren’t like those poor men,” she told him, her gaze sweeping
over him. He was quite thin, yes, but not emaciated.
“I wasn’t there as long as most,” he told her, “and then there were
my friends.”
Something changed in his expression at the mention of his friends.
A warmth stole over the cool blue of his eyes, which reminded her all
the more painfully of those she had been forced to leave behind. So
much so that she was grateful when he continued.
“They kept me alive in every sense of the word. I remember the day
I first came into camp. The smells, the sights—” He shook his head as
if to dispel the images. “But I’ve told you, I won’t describe it. At least
the other captives were too miserable on their own accounts to care
about the circumstances of my capture.”
His gaze, which had drifted off as he spoke, rose to meet hers,
then he glanced down in wonder at her hand, which she had placed
atop his.
“I’ve known cowards, Mr. Davis,” she said softly. “And I’d never
number you among them.”
She leaned forward, only half-realizing what she offered, only
half-guessing that this blond Northerner would lean forward as
well. Would raise his hands to grasp her arms gently. Would touch
his lips so warmly against hers.
She felt as if a candle flame had kissed her. Its heat seared her
without burning, singed her without pain. Instead, the warmth of it
coursed through her, pooling in her breasts, her belly, that tiny,
secret place that melted like wax heated by fire.
She moaned with the intensity of it. Never had she imagined that
any kiss could feel like this.
His hand rose to stroke her hair, to cup her cheek as though she
were something precious, and all the while, their kiss went on and on,
opening an aching need inside her, an unguessed, ancient want. She
felt the tip of his tongue taste her lips, felt them part, felt her whole
mouth opening to him. Felt how easily, how eagerly, the rest of her
would follow. And for the first time she understood how it was so
many women allowed men to compromise them, how even her proper
sister had opened herself up to this exquisite ruin.
She wondered, in her saner moments, how she would feel about it.
Surely there would be shame then, even if she felt nothing but bliss
now. Shame she had allowed this near-stranger, this ragged-looking
Yankee to—
He moved to pull her closer, and she regained her sanity. The passion
she had felt iced over, and her body splintered just a moment later,
jerking her back, away from him.
“Thank you.” He stood, and a wistful smile warmed the cool blue
of his eyes.
She jumped to her feet and felt a fierce blush rise to heat her cheeks.
Thank you? Was that how he saw her kiss—the first real kiss she’d
ever given—as no more than a favor?
“You’re very kind . . . and very lovely,” Gabriel said, his gaze so
intense she had to drop her own. “I’m much obliged to you for
helping me tonight. Too obliged to try to take advantage, tempting
as you are.”
Her efforts at thought felt like wading upstream against floodwaters.
Impossible as it seemed, she felt flattered and insulted all at once. She
needed time to sort out exactly how it was she felt about their kiss,
how she felt about this man, this enemy.
“I-I think you should leave now,” she stammered. “I will remember
you in my prayers. I-I’m not sorry that I helped you with those men.”
Before she could react, he leaned to kiss her. But, to her relief, it was
a chaste kiss on the top of her head, more like one of those her brothers
might bestow than the cataclysm that passed before. “I don’t want you
to be sorry later, either; I want you to be safe. Please, stay away from
them the rest of the trip. How far are you going?”
The words “St. Louis” stuck in her throat. She couldn’t tell him,
couldn’t tell anyone, just in case someone followed her. “I’ll be on
board another day or two,” she said instead.
His index finger brushed her cheek. Though the gesture seemed
innocent enough, the pleasure that rippled through her body felt
white hot. For a moment, she feared he saw the blaze the touch
engendered, that he would insist on staying here to ruin her for any
decent man.
The idea that he might
be
a decent man skimmed across her surface,
as graceful as an egret. But what sort of decent man told his secrets to
a stranger, an enemy, no less? Still, the impression stayed with her, a
ghostly image of a stark white bird in flight.
He reached for her but at the last moment stayed his hand.
The longing in his eyes made her heart race with a mixture of
apprehension and desire.
A smile faltered, and he dropped his hand to the doorknob.
“Good-bye, Miss Alexander, and once again I thank you.”
He stepped out into the darkened main cabin. She stared at the door
as it clicked softly shut. She really should have felt immense relief.
Yankees were so often vilified for their lewdness that no true lady of
New Orleans would willingly spend time alone with one.
So why had she? And worse yet, why did she feel so disappointed
that he’d been such a gentleman and left?
Her mind turned back to the letter she had written to Marie, the
question she had asked her:
How could you allow romantic sentiment to
blind you to the fact that this man was an enemy? How ever did you come to
love a cursed Yankee?
Her own words shamed her, for at last she understood how much
more a man was than his uniform. Yes, her sister had been wrong, but
not for seeing past the Union blue. Her failure had been one of naïveté
and not disloyalty.
She’d take that letter from her reticule, Yvette decided, and she’d
tear it into bits. She did not delude herself that such an action would
truly benefit Marie, but it was the only way she could imagine of
taking back her angry words. And letters to the dead had their own
strange brand of logic.
Panic jolted through her at the realization that her reticule was
missing from the room. It contained her letters to Marie, her small
supply of money, and most importantly, the document she’d sewn
into the lining, the letter, written in Darien Russell’s hand, that she
hoped would save her life—and destroy his.
Suspicion blazed into anger as she thought of Gabriel. Had he
taken it with him? Had he played her for a fool the same way Russell
played Marie?
Her heart thundered its denial. Gabriel Davis might be a damned
Yankee, but he would not steal from her. He could not have said the
things he had, kissed her the way he had, and stolen . . .
Darien Russell had kissed her sister, and much more. She wanted
to grasp her chamber pot and vomit, but instead she forced herself
to think.
Where had she last seen the cloth bag? When had she last held it?
Then she knew. She’d taken it with her to the galley, and she had
not brought it back. She swayed with the realization that she must
have somehow lost it. With her whole life riding on that reticule, she
had dropped it somewhere, perhaps when she had given that poor,
starving man her food.
As terrible, as frightened, as she felt, relief came, too. That she had
not been so wrong about Gabriel, that he had not repaid her trust
with treachery.
The thought gave her strength, which she needed desperately, for
she had no other choice but to try to retrieve her reticule from the
wretched prisoners, who had undoubtedly discovered it by now.
For without it, she knew she had no chance at all.

Darien Russell had spent most of the evening nursing a drink at the
bar in the main cabin. From that vantage, he could talk with a few of
the cabin passengers and watch for any sign of his quarry. But as men
began to claim both cots and spaces on the carpet, the smooth
Tennessee whiskey lost its power to ease his troubled mind. The idea
of Yvette somewhere aboard this boat, laughing at his fruitless efforts,
cast his thoughts into an uproar.

It could be even worse, he realized. She could be talking to
someone instead, perhaps even a Union officer. Though it seemed
unlikely she would risk such a conversation, she was both charming
and articulate enough to convince a reasonable man of his guilt.

Perspiration erupted across Darien’s face like a liquid pox. This
same fear had prompted him to allow her the opportunity to escape in
New Orleans, to put distance between her and his chief detractor,
Colonel Jeffers.

At the thought of that insufferable Kentucky ruffian, Darien nearly
swore aloud. The judgmental, sanctimonious yokel had despised him
from the outset simply because he’d worked for the unpopular General
Butler. Darien had never been implicated in any of the scandals that had
led to Butler’s recall from New Orleans, but the stench clung to him as
if he’d been consorting with a skunk.

When General Banks, the new general in charge of the New Orleans
occupation, had decided to place Darien on his own staff, Colonel
Jeffers voiced his suspicions. Darien Russell, he claimed, had been
fleecing wealthy Creole families. If only he could convince one of the
victims to come forward.