Elizabeth White - Redeeming Gabriel

“You will start tomorrow,” Papa said. “And I want it completed in three weeks. Money’s no object when we’ve got the chance to sink Yankee gunboats without risking our own men.”

“I suppose it could be done.” The other man paused. “Laniere thinks he can correct the problem with the propeller. If nothing else goes wrong, we could break the blockade.”

Papa chuckled. “Excellent. I intend to be situated in a place of influence when we send the Yankees back north where they belong.” There was a scrape of chairs, a mutter of goodbyes, and the light was extinguished.

Camilla leaned against the house. Her father was setting himself up to make pots of money off a vessel so secret that it had to be scuttled before the Yanks could get their hands on it. It was one thing for her father to comply with the Confederate army’s demands that he provide transportation for the troops—strictly a defensive service. But to invest family money in a deadly weapon…

Maybe she’d misunderstood.

On shaky legs she crept around the side of the house and climbed the wisteria. She pulled herself through the open window and collapsed onto the floor. Sitting against the window seat, she removed her filthy clothes and tossed them under the bed. The room reeked of turpentine.

She hoped Lady wouldn’t take a notion to visit. Her grandmother never let a thing go by, which was how she kept the household under control, but so far she didn’t know about the underground railroad. And she didn’t know about Camilla’s communication with Harry.

Camilla rose to light the lamp, then unbuttoned her shirt and yanked it off. With a little grunt of frustration, she picked the knots free and unwound the linen strips that bound her bosom. Gradually she could breathe more freely. She heaved a sigh of relief as the last strip fell into her lap. Then she remembered the folded paper in her pocket. Rummaging under the bed, she found it and eagerly unfolded it.

She frowned. This wasn’t a letter. It was a sermon. She skimmed to the bottom. Harry always signed his name, but there was no signature here.

She read the sermon again. It was taken from the biblical account of the Israelite spies Moses sent to infiltrate the land of Canaan.

Mystified, she slipped on her nightgown and tucked the paper into the lacy ruffle of her sleeve. The stranger on the boat had said her name. And she’d never forget that voice. Smooth and deep, like the cough syrup Portia poured down her throat when she had the croup.

The familiar way he had touched her mouth and her hair had been abominable, but he’d kept her from being discovered by the deckhand. His arms had held her gently.

Cross-legged on the cushion at the open window, she touched her lips. She could still taste a faint saltiness from his hand. He’d said she had a pretty mouth. How would he know that? It had been pitch-dark almost the whole time. Maybe Harry had described her.

What did he mean by asking her to deliver the sermon to the “Man Upstairs”? The whole scene had been so bizarre and confusing. She’d forgotten all about looking for Virgil’s bag. Maybe she could make him a new one. Sighing, she rose to blow out the lamp.

The doorknob rattled.

She nearly dropped the candle snuffer. She’d nearly forgotten Portia, who always brought her bathwater and something to eat after a running. She hurried to unlock the door.

Portia stomped in with a brass can of steaming water under one arm and a stack of clean linen under the other. “If ever I saw such a mess of idiots in all my born days!” She thunked the can down on the washstand and faced Camilla with a righteous glare.

Camilla shut the door, a finger to her lips. “You’ll wake up Lady—you know what a light sleeper she is!”

“You two hours late, missy.” Portia tossed the linen on the bed, reached for Camilla and yanked the nightgown off over her head. “Horace says you all nearly get caught by the graycoats, then by the grace of God you get the delivery to the station—then Miss Camilla ups and takes off again without a word of explanation!” Portia’s nostrils flared. “Bathe quick, before that smell sticks to you permanent. Then you can eat while you tell me where you been.”

“I’m sorry, Portia.” Camilla meekly began to wash.

“Hmph.” Portia dug under the bed and came up with Camilla’s stinking clothes. “You fall in a pigpen on the way home?”

“It’s the pitch from the boat.” Camilla completed her bath, hung her towel on a brass rack beside the washstand and picked up her hairbrush. It was going to take hours to get the tangles out of her hair.

Having already bundled the offending clothes into a canvas bag and tossed the whole thing down a laundry chute, Portia snatched the brush. “Lucky you didn’t get the stuff in your hair—we’d be cuttin’ it off right about now.”

A haircut would be less painful than Portia’s brisk strokes with the brush, but Camilla closed her eyes and endured. She deserved a certain amount of pain for her stupidity.

“You gonna tell Portia where you been for the past two hours?” The brushstrokes slowed and gentled. “I been just about out of my mind, worrying.”

Camilla rested her head back against the cushion of Portia’s bosom. “I had to go back to fetch something I left on the boat.”

“It better been something almighty important.”

“It was Virgil’s news bag.” Camilla waited for the explosion that didn’t come. Feeling a tremor under the back of her head, she opened her eyes.

Portia’s dark face was perfectly bland, though there was an amused spark in the back of her eyes. “Girl-child, you’re gonna put yourself out one too many times for that cockeyed old man. I sure hope the Lord makes good on that promise about ‘doing it unto the least of these.’” She snorted and began to brush again. “Virgil Byrd’s about the least of anything I ever seen!”

Gabriel woke to the sound of a timid scratching at his door. Having long ago trained himself to sleep with one foot on the floor, he moved in one fluid step to the door, his derringer cocked and ready to fire. “Who is it?”

“Reverend Leland, it’s S-Sally. Sir.”

Reminded of his ministerial alter ego, he relaxed and lowered the gun. Opening the door, he found the young maid who had escorted him to his room yesterday twisting her apron into a white corkscrew. “A bit early in the day for spiritual counseling, my dear,” he said dryly.

Sally’s blood climbed to the ruffle of her mobcap. “Sir, I got an urgent message.”

Gabriel pulled his galluses up over his shoulders. “What is it?”

“They’s a lieutenant downstairs, told me to come get you on the double. Said tell you there’s a lady been took by Colonel Abernathy, and she needs you right away.”

Gabriel’s blood froze. The only lady he knew here was Delia Matthews. “Tell the lieutenant I’m on my way, and ask him to make my—ah, cousin as comfortable as possible.”

The mobcap bobbed and disappeared.

Gabriel dressed and shaved, managing to nick his chin with the razor in his haste. Irritated, he examined the cut in the mirror. Beards and mustaches were in fashion these days, but yesterday’s trip to the barber was essential to his disguise. He hadn’t been clean shaven since his sixteenth birthday; he hardly recognized himself. In fact, he’d forgotten about that arrow-shaped scar his brother, Johnny, had put on his upper lip when they were kids. He touched the scar. Johnny was probably dead by now. Ma always said the good died young.

Gabriel had every intention of living to be an old man.

Escorted by the young lieutenant, he fumed all the way downtown to Confederate headquarters. Delia should have been headed upriver with her troupe by now. If they’d left without her, he had no way to get the cipher into Union hands with any expediency. And what if she’d been searched?