Lorenzo and the Turncoat (15 page)

Lorenzo passed a cabin with a small porch. An armed guard stood in front of it.

Intrigued, Lorenzo took a couple of steps forward to read the sign nailed to the door. QUARANTINE.

“Why didn't you tell me there was a contagious disease in the fort?” Lorenzo asked.

“Because the doctor said the disease has been contained to that cabin,” the private replied. “It isn't a threat.”

“What's the illness?”

“Scarlet fever.”

Lorenzo had never treated anyone with the disease, but he had read about it in medical books. He had once asked his office partner what it looked like and how to cure it. Dr. Dunoyer said he had never treated it.

“Who has scarlet fever?” Lorenzo asked.

“Mrs. Hawthorne.”

“Hawthorne?” Thomas asked, his face reflecting sudden terror. “Is her husband an officer?”

“No. A plantation owner. They just arrived in Baton Rouge. Poor lady! She was visiting the fort when she got sick.”

Lorenzo shot a glance at his “valet.” Thomas looked relieved by the information. Hawthorne, the British officer he had once served, was the only man who could identify him as a turncoat.

Hawthorne gave Madame's hand a comforting little squeeze. Guilt gnawed at his insides. He wasn't sure how she had gotten scarlet fever, but she had been in his custody when she began showing signs of it. He was responsible for her health and well-being.

Scarlet fever was a complication he hadn't expected. But did it alter his plan? He thought about that a moment. No, it only delayed it a bit.

Someone knocked timidly on the door.

When he opened it, he found a basket of food and a pitcher filled with tea. He picked them up and stood for a moment in the doorway, enjoying the fresh air.

Davy Morgan, the softhearted private, had been replaced by a Waldecker who didn't look nearly as kind or sympathetic.

Just then, Hawthorne spotted Private Morgan. He stood outside headquarters with a Spanish officer and a lad holding the reins of two horses.

The Spanish officer stepped inside. Morgan remained with the lad tending the horses.

There was something familiar about the valet—the way he walked, the way he carried himself. From this angle, Hawthorne could not get a good look at his face. He took a step forward.

The guard cocked his pistol and aimed it straight at Hawthorne's heart.

Freezing in place, he raised his hands palm up in a conciliatory gesture. No doubt the soldier had orders to shoot to kill rather than let the two of them out of quarantine and risk spreading the disease to the fort.

The lad holding the horses turned his head slightly.

Hawthorne's jaw dropped. It was Thomas! He recognized him immediately, despite his being a head taller than the last time he had seen him. Hawthorne had sent him with Dunstan to New Orleans to gather information. He had never seen either of them again.

Perplexed, Hawthorne went back inside. Fist to chin, he hunched over and tried to puzzle it all out. Had Thomas been captured by the Spanish along with Dunstan? If so, how did he escape? What was he doing in Baton Rouge? He was holding two horses, one for himself and one for the officer. Evidently, he was the Spaniard's servant.

Thomas had always been a reliable source of information and honest to a fault.

Hawthorne wanted desperately to talk to the lad, but could do nothing until the quarantine was over.

Lorenzo cradled his three-cornered hat in the crook of his arm and bowed to Lieutenant Colonel Dickson. “It is an honor to meet you, sir.”

Dickson acknowledged him with a barely perceptible nod and gestured for him to take a seat.

Lorenzo eased into a well-padded, red velvet chair and did a quick scan of the room. Eugenie would have called the gilt mirror, hanging tapestry, and statue of a Roman goddess “Baroque bad taste.” She despised rooms designed to impress guests rather than make them feel at home.

Lorenzo tamped down his sorrow. He and Eugenie had become so entwined, thoughts of her filled every waking moment. Everything reminded him of her in one way or the other. He thought leaving New Orleans would ease the pain. It did not.

Lorenzo forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. “His Excellency, Don Bernardo De Gálvez, Governor of the Louisiana Territory and Colonel in His Catholic Majesty's Army, sends his greetings.” Lorenzo slipped the colonel's letter from his inside pocket and passed it toward Dickson.

He refused to take it. “I don't read Spanish.”

“The colonel is aware of that, sir. He wrote it in French.”

Dickson's eyes shifted left and right, as if he were thinking of a reason not to accept the letter. With a look of resignation, he stretched forth his hand, palm up, and
Lorenzo deposited it there. Dickson broke the seal, unfolded it, and read. He reached for a quill pen and dipped it in ink. “No,” he wrote beside the first point. He shook his head and wrote “no” to the second request. He lingered over the next one. “No,” he said after a long moment of hesitation. He wrote “no” to the rest of the points so quickly, Lorenzo doubted he had read them all.

“Sir,” Lorenzo began, “the colonel doesn't expect an immediate answer.”

“But he shall have one.”

“The points are open to negotiation.”

“No, they aren't. No contraband enters Baton Rouge. There are no smugglers here. Therefore, I cannot comply with any of your colonel's requests.”

The man was either a liar or deluded. Smuggling was rampant. Maybe he recognized this as a ruse and wanted to get Lorenzo out of Baton Rouge as quickly as possible.

“Thank you for your kind consideration, sir,” Lorenzo said, taking the letter Dickson passed back. He tried to remain cordial with the man, although he had taken an instant, irrational dislike to him.

“You have your answer. I want you out of English territory at once.”

Lorenzo forced a smile. “Sir, I fear that will be impossible. I have a second mission in your fair town. I am to deliver a letter to a woman named Eugenie Dubreton. Do you perchance know where she lives?”

“I know of no such person.”

“She is French. A redhead. I am told she is very beautiful.”

“I'm sorry. I can't help you.”

Lorenzo decided to drop the matter. A kidnapper could hold Eugenie under this dunce's nose and he would never know it.

Dickson pointed a finger at him. “If I see you in town tomorrow … Well, let's just say there will be consequences.”

“I bid you
adieu
, sir, and thank you for your gracious hospitality.” Lorenzo bowed and headed out the door.

Hawthorne lit a candle and tilted
Beowulf
, a book he remembered from his childhood, to the light. The doctor had an excellent library, meticulously catalogued by genre. What a stroke of good luck. With all this reading material, he wouldn't die of boredom. The doctor's cabin would be home for the next two weeks.

Engrossed in the story of Beowulf's fight with Grendel, he read and read. After a while, he pulled out his pocket watch. Nine thirty? Already? He glanced at Madame, fitfully sleeping. He checked to make sure she was comfortable and returned to his reading. Around midnight, he finished the book, closed it, and returned it to its proper place on the shelf.

Madame stirred. Her eyes half opened. She mumbled something he didn't understand. He leaned over her and refreshed the moist cloth on her forehead.

“You were right about the hurricane, Lorenzo.”

There was that name again. Her gibberish continued, making little sense. She muttered something about a wedding and thrashed about.

“There, there,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and mopping her forehead and cheeks. Hawthorne laid the back of his hand against her forehead.

She pushed it away. “Stop being a doctor, Lorenzo.”

Who was Lorenzo?

At the crack of dawn, Lorenzo sat beside Thomas in sullen silence and stared at the ham and poached eggs the innkeeper served for breakfast. He had never felt so disheartened. He had knocked on every door in town, but no one had seen a French woman with auburn-red hair.

Thomas gobbled his food down and eyed Lorenzo's plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

Lorenzo slid the plate in front of him.

Thomas tore into it with gusto.

Breakfast finished, they saddled up and set out down the road that led from Baton Rouge to Manchac. Lorenzo twisted around and took one final look. Common sense told him to admit she was gone. It wasn't unusual for people to vanish and never be heard from again. Once, on a cattle drive, the cook disappeared in a stampede. No one ever knew what had become of him.

Still, Lorenzo's heart told him Eugenie was alive. His head told him otherwise.

Hawthorne ran his hands through his hair and watched Madame thrash about. She began to mumble.

Oh, God, please! Not another hallucination. It had been an awful night with Madame experiencing one fever-induced nightmare after another.

The first one concerned him greatly. She had fancied herself a domestic servant in the Gálvez household and held an imaginary conversation with Colonel and Mrs. Gálvez.

An hour later, a second hallucination scared the devil out of him. She looked up at the ceiling and laughed. “Do you see them,
mon cher
?” she asked.

“
Non, ma petite
.” He mopped sweat beads from her forehead. “What do you see?”

“Angels.” She laughed, her eyes on the ceiling in rapt attention. “Oh, look. They are but three inches tall. See how they play?”

“
Non, ma cherie
.”

“There! Do you not see the little one tumbling and turning somersaults? He looks like Lorenzo. Oh, my! He bumps into Héctor.” Her eyes seemed to follow an imaginary chase scene. Her expression turned serious. “Robert, why are the angels here? Have they come for me?”

He felt his heart rumble. “No, Madame. Your mind is playing tricks.”

“Oh, no. I see them very clearly.”

Hawthorne squeezed his eyes shut to hold back the tears about to spill down his cheeks. He liked this woman, truly and genuinely felt a deep affection for her. He admired the way she fought him and attempted to escape. He even admired her for grabbing his pistol and trying to shoot him. He took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and softly kissed her fingers.

If the fever did not break soon, Dr. Somerset had said on his last visit, she would die. Hawthorne lowered his head and did something he had not done in a long time. He prayed.