River Magic (7 page)

 

 

In her bedroom she heard the wail of a train whistle, then the rumble of steel as the westbound rolled over the railroad bridge. “How that sound must affect the men caged within the prison walls,” she said to her audience of one, Amelia. “How it must remind them of freedom so close, yet so far away.”

These weren't the only men incarcerated. Such prisons were springing up, North and South, now that prisoner exchanges had stopped on both sides. “Why can't one side or the other put an end to the insanity? Not that I don't want the South to win. I do. For the sake of my family and our neighbors. But war's got to stop. Soon!”

Amelia whipped her tail from flank to flank, and India chose to believe the cat, too, had no taste for bloodshed.

India paced the bedroom, stopping at the north window. Her gaze caught on the telegraph poles and the lines stringing them together. O'Brien hadn't verified her identity. At least she had no reason to believe otherwise.

Telegrams. Pure magic they were. How nice it would be, having the privilege to use this modern means of communication. Alas, the Unionists in her part of the country forbade access to the lines, an edict reaching across the occupied lands and into the Confederate States still standing as of early April 1864. If she could have gotten word to Matt, had he been given the chance to respond, this whole trip would have been unnecessary.

But she was here, Mattie was there, and Connor O'Brien had tied her hands, figuratively.

She stared at the prison compound. From this second-floor view, she saw above the fence. Inside, trenches paralleled walls, creating a dead line that kept tunnels from reaching the world outside. Six long rows of cheap shanties, almost a hundred buildings in all, were lined up like ragged soldiers at attention. She scowled. None among those snow-covered buildings was a hospital or a pest house, or so she'd learned from Opal.

The Yankees weren't even respecting the dead. She saw a detail of soldiers working within the prison, tossing bodies into a common ditch. More casualties of smallpox and exposure. “Can't be from dueling matches or heat prostration, that's for sure.” Her eyes closed. “Don't let Matt be among them.”

India pressed a fist to her bosom. He was her last brother, the only one alive to be scion of the Marshall family. Not that he thirsted for the planter's life, he didn't. His bent was toward the sea. Hotheaded and dashing, Matt had rushed to the call to arms just days after the war began. He might not like being a planter, but he had been sad upon leaving a wife, baby, and remnants of Marshall kin behind at Pleasant Hill.

Captain Mathews Marshall went to combat secure in his mind the war would end in weeks, that the plantation and its residents would bode well. It hadn't. They hadn't. But neither had he.

“I've got to do something—anything! I can't stand in my warm clothes in this toasty house and do nothing. I must do what I can to help Matt and the others.”

Her meager crates of supplies wouldn't be enough for all the men, but perhaps she could save a few.

India fell to desperate means. “I'm sorry to do this to you, Amelia,” she said, eyeing the long-maned cat, “but you won't be too sorely stressed.”

A plan in mind, she locked Amelia in the chiffonnier.

After freshening her face powder of ashes, India summoned Doot Smith, then forced him into the butler's pantry by pistol point, turned the key, and dropped it into her pocket. It didn't take but a couple of minutes to box up the cookies, fetch her wrap, and face the biting cold. Ouch!

Once she'd known beautiful Aprils. Vivid shows of azaleas and dogwoods always broadcast the most loveliest month of the year, and springtime meant green grass, chirping birds, budding trees to a Louisianan. Except for that awful April of 1861, spring was a time for fancy and for long walks along the greatest river in America.

But not in Illinois.

India shivered. On this island that housed more Southerners than Northerners, she knew her discomfort was mild compared to the others.

Renewed, she stole a crowbar from the carriage house, then marched toward the wooden fortress. A cadre of decrepit men, all dressed in the raiment of Union soldiers, approached. Should she ask their assistance? No. They outnumbered her. Better she should cull one or two from a less populated batch.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” she called as the curious flock eyed the crowbar and stringed box, saluted, and continued in the opposite direction.

One lagged back.

Skinny as a toothpick, with a white beard straggling below his concave chest, he winked at India, then sidled up. “How doin', ma'am?” There was nary a tooth in his head. “What's a purty little gal like you doin' in a place like this?”

Jumping Jehoshaphat! He was flirting with her. He surely wouldn't make the cut as hero. And he ought to be ashamed of himself, flirting with a female young enough to be his granddaughter.
You look more his age, remember?

Well, India wanted no part of an eighteenth-century admirer too blind to tell pretty from plain. “Excuse me,” she said, and tried to step away from him.

For someone from the 1700's, he moved fast. “Ye be a widder woman?”

“I am not.”

“Married?”

“No.”

“I ain't neither. M'wife died back in '46. I be Ezekiel Pays of Iowa. Borned in Kentuck'. The ladies call me Zeke.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” this lady lied.

“I know who ye be. Ye be that sanitary lady. India Marshall. Mind if I call ye Indy?”

“Actually, I do.” No one but family called her nicknames.

“Whatcha doin' with that crowbar, purty gal?”

“I use it to protect myself against unwanted advances.”

He chuckled, the sound rumbling through his lungs and out his cavernous maw. “Always did like a lady what would march up to a cannon's mouth.”

“Sergeant Pays, please excuse me. I'm in a hurry.”

He tipped his kepi. “Be seein' ye around, purty gal.”

Not if India had any say in it. She marched on. No more than twenty yards from Ezekiel Pays, she had a change of heart. That old goat could have helped her!

She turned around, but he'd caught up with his fellow soldiers. Oh, well. She carried on. Upon reaching the wooden fence that ringed the prison, she lodged the crowbar behind a nail head. She took quick action to dislodge a board.

“You there!” The sentry, rifle raised, shouted a warning. “Cease!”

India lowered the crowbar and waved the guard down. “Sir, do come and help me. This is a matter of life and death! ”

Night having fallen, India sat on a straight chair in the mansion library, Connor circling her like a soldier did a downed yet armed enemy. If she'd been a man instead of acting as if she had a set of balls, he would have weighed the possibilities of killing her or crippling her for making a buffoon of him.

India being a woman, all he could do was fume.

“With Mrs. Lawrence in town, we're alone in this house.” His teeth clenched. “It wouldn't take much for me to strangle you, India Marshall.”

“I had to do something. I never promised I wouldn't.”

“You offended Corporal Smith.” Not to mention Amelia, who had scratched her rescuer upon release. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, flirting with my homesick men.”

“I had to do something,” India repeated, pushing the spectacles up her nose. “And I wasn't flirting.”

“You, by damn, were.”

“I was not.”

“What do you call grinning and flirting and fawning?” He called it balls, of a sort. Feminine weaponry to fell the male of the species. “Their tongues lolled like dogs on a hot day.”

“You do have a gift for exaggeration.”

From her expression, Connor realized something. She didn't have a clue about the effect she'd had on the group, especially a toothless veteran of the War of 1812, Ezekiel Pays.

She was watching Connor with those big, bespectacled indigo eyes ringed in charcoal and dotted with lavender; her vivaciousness jumped straight into his veins. Why would a lively woman such as India Marshall, sixty or twenty-four, not know she could charm men on this post, from thirty to seventy-two?

The answer was an avenue he decided not to explore, since feminine charisma had given Connor problems. Lots of them. And, as always, his line of sight showed a mind of its own, riveting to her, while her attention went elsewhere.

He could never get enough of the sight of her, and figured it a crying shame she'd never dressed her age for him . . . outside of that first night, with that scrap of lavender silk. The recollection warmed a spot in his lower reaches that he didn't want heating right now, what with his anger over her actions as a whole. “Do something with your wig, Scheherazade. It's askew.”

While she set the horrid gray mass to rights, Connor tried to close his senses against her lavender scent. She was screwing up his cherished memories of ladylike.

He shoved a handkerchief into her hand. “On second thought, take off that wig. And wipe your face.”

For once she did as ordered, her hair flowing freely and her face retaking its natural tawny glow. “How long are you going to stay mad at me?” she asked, innocence itself.

“Forever,” he shouted, aggravated at her disguise and how it had mesmerized the Iowan reservists.

“Just because I gave your men cookies?” She doffed the eyeglasses. “Just because they were nice enough to go after my crates and distribute them?”

“You played dirty. You got the Iowans to let you cruise through two barracks rows. I'm told you said something to them on the order of, 'Let's hope someone like me is looking out for your grandsons who fight in the South.' ”

“What's wrong with giving a bit of hope for their kin? Or does your lack of compassion also extend to our own men?”

Our men? When Abe Lincoln got fat! Connor had proof her men wore gray. He got in her face. “You're a wicked girl.”

“I've been called worse.”

“I'll bet you have.” Geezus, Connor yearned to kiss her right now, if for no other reason than to wipe the smirk off her delectable lips. “I hope you're happy with yourself.”

“Actually, I am. My supplies have reached their target. And I made the acquaintance of the post surgeon.”

“By devious means. By claiming a cat had gotten loose and that you feared Amelia would be eaten by hungry prisoners.”

“It worked, didn't it?”

Well, she hadn't been wholly successful. Holding on to his own satisfaction, Connor grinned with superiority. He had second-guessed her reason for being here, even before her little performance of this afternoon. For once, he had the upper hand.

He goaded, “Did you achieve
all
your goals?”

“I should imagine you're lousy at cards, Major. I can see by the triumph in your eyes that you have an ace up your sleeve.”

“Cards isn't my game. Soldiering is. I am a very good officer.”

Her indigo eyes widened in spurious disrespect. “Is that why Sonny Boy has been assigned to watch over a troop of elderly reservists and a collection of pitiable prisoners? Seems to me a 'very good' soldier would be polishing his epaulets with U.S. Grant or one of the other hell-for-leather 'very good' officers.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

He hauled her out of the chair. As the spectacles fell to the floor, her abundant breasts shoved against Connor's stomach. His treasonous loins tightened. No woman had ever inflamed him, bodily or spiritually, as India Marshall could and did.

He had an awful premonition: he'd met his match in her.

“If I let you, you'd be my undoing. I doubt the milk of human kindness would flow from your breast to me.”

“How you do go on.”

His fingers combed into her hair, his palms holding her head still. He wished he didn't have the goods on her. Why couldn't everything be different? Why couldn't Aunt Tessa show up to work some of that magic he'd overheard her whispering about as she paid homage to a souvenir fobbed off on her in Marseilles?

Would that her prized lamp
could
grant a wish or two.

Screw the lamp.

India was magic enough on her own.

His lips ground against hers, and the feminine ones stirred like a dogwood budding in springtime. By God, she tasted good, too good. Connor would take her right here, right on the library floor, and his lovemaking would break her ill spirit, make her pliant and sweet-tempered.

Sure. Right. And Jeff Davis believed in human dignity.

Connor thrust her away. She stepped back. Her foot contacted the spectacles, slipped. He tried to catch her, but her behind landed in a puddle of gray skirts and irate face.

“Bastard,” she uttered. “You rejected me, and now you take the liberty of toying with my feelings.”

Was that what he'd done? Of course he had. They might be players in a game bigger than both of them, but they were playing in the small, intimate theater of a man and woman attracted to each other. Who would be the casualty of their private war?

“Would you prefer I never kiss you again?” he asked.

“That is exactly what I prefer.”

Ask a foolish question, be ready for the answer.
Maybe it would be best to keep a distance.

Since when had Connor O'Brien done what was best?

He bent to help the mighty squirt up, but a small packet packed strength. She yanked his arm, twisting his thumb; he fell beside her, a whoosh of air being crushed from his lungs.

Like a shot, her elbow slammed into his midsection. If it hadn't been hard as a washboard, he might of yelped again, but Connor was in top condition. He rolled away from a second punch.

“Cease,” he roared while pitching back to restrain another attack. “Are you okay, Squirt?” he asked, finding a sobriquet that he doubted she'd appreciate. “Are you hurt?”

“It'll take more than a Yankee from Dixie to hurt me.”

He smoothed a hand over her cheek, his honest sentiments getting the better of him. “God, you're wonderful.”

“I'm not God, but thank you for the compliment, anyway.”

He tweaked her nose. “Do you always have an answer for everything?”

“If I did, would I be masquerading as a crone and begging a pigheaded major for mercy?”

He rocked her to him, the feel of her curves doing wild things to his senses. His tongue stroked her ear. “Is that what you're doing, begging for mercy?”

“Y-yes.”

“I know you're from Louisiana. And you're no sanitarian, so save your lies on that score.” One hand cupped her jaw. As if he didn't know her answer in advance, Connor asked, “What is it you want?”

“My brother.”

It had been the failed escape this afternoon that had pulled Connor from guarding the fractious India. It hadn't taken a wizard to size up Captain Mathews Marshall, CSA, and his resemblance to another agitator with the same last name. Connor now knew why she was here. To save her brother.

How? By helping him escape? This seemed the best conclusion. Connor slid his thumb across her lips. “What do you want him for?”

“He knows what our father did with the gold.”

Connor slipped his fingers beneath her nape, enjoying the way she felt, and pulled her closer. “Gold?”

“Gold. Papa's inheritance. Papa is a sea captain, you see. In late '60, not long after Mama died, he sailed away on a trading voyage to the Orient. The family hasn't heard from him since. He didn't figure on the war or that we'd lack cash for the thousand-and-one needs of a farm turned upside down.”

A sea captain owned a farm in the Delta? Connor pictured a small place, needy, and he drew an opinion. The Marshalls were a colorful and complex lot, perhaps not too wise in decision-making. After meeting the second Marshall this afternoon, and after hearing about a third in the family, Connor had no doubt about that deduction.

More than anything, though, he felt for India's plight. Of all his problems, privation hadn't been amongst them. But he knew about losing parents. And he empathized with her loss. She, nonetheless, didn't show too much grief. That was her way.

He certainly wouldn't press her about it. “How does this all tie in to gold?”

“Papa stashed gold in a bank somewhere. The only people he confided in were my brother and the husband of our eldest sister. You know men, they don't like to 'worry a little lady's head' about finances. But that's neither here nor there. I've got to ask Matt about the money. You see, America's husband, Kirby, has passed to a greater reward.”

“You don't appear alarmed about your father's extended absence.”

“Apparently you don't know much about the sailing life. It isn't unusual for a ship sailing in Pacific waters to be gone for years at a time. Anyhow, Papa comes from sailors. His mother hailed from Portuguese sailors. The bloodline harks back to the Arabic lands. Intrepid sailors, those who went to Portugal. Captain Winston Marshall, senior, is more than capable to taking care of himself.”

Being aware of sailors who sailed from the peninsula—they made for good military reading—Connor knew they had created black Dutch out of blond Hollanders, and where the heck else would black preceding other nationalities have sprung from? “All this explains your coloring, barring your eyes.”

“A saving grace in West Feliciana Parish, blue eyes in the family. Else we might be pegged as unfit for society.”

“True,” Connor answered dryly. Aunt Tessa's beau had caused quite a stir in Memphis.

“Our background is neither here nor there.” India swallowed. “About my brother, I must see him.”

“To pick Mathews Marshall's brain?”

“Yes.” Hers was a poker face, but it now betrayed her. Loving concern now molded her expression; and what had been a soft body turned rigid in his arms as she asked, “How do you know my brother's name?”

“Give me some credit, India.” India. He'd called her by her given name. Connor liked it, and the way the weird appellation felt smooth on his tongue. “I didn't figure you came to Rock Island simply to hand out a few cookies.”

Concern for her sibling evident in her voice, she demanded, “Major O'Brien, how is my brother?”

“Tangled as we are, don't you think it might be more appropriate to call me Connor?”

“You didn't answer my question.”

He exhaled. “As of this afternoon, your brother was punching out a guard and trying to organize his barracks mates into an escape.”

“That's Matt. But he's not dead! Thank heavens. Is he all right? Sick? There's so much smallpox . . .”

“The only thing ailing Captain Marshall is orneriness. Rabble-rousing must be a family trait.”

“Some things can't be bred out of a family.” Her shrug disputed the familial pride shining in her face.

Her eyes bore into Connor. “I want to see my brother.”

“You can't. He's in detention. In chains. I do not abide trouble-making,” Connor said, trying to get it through her head that she was not dealing with one of her adoring codgers.

“Don't you dare hurt Matt.”

“What could you do to stop me? You may be a clever conniver, but I'm still acting commander on this post.”

For once she behaved like a malleable female. “Please don't hurt Matt.”

“Please . . . Nice. I don't believe I've heard that word pass your lips since our first day of acquaintance.”

“If I say it a dozen times, will it make an impression?”

“No.”

“What's wrong with you that you have no heart?”

It made him uncomfortable, the idea of revealing his tangled edges. “I have a heart. But it doesn't beat for the misguided, not anymore.”

Should he tell his reasons? Would they shut her up?

An unexplainable urge to confide came over him. He got to his feet, helped her to stand and to a settee, then went to an opposite chair. “As for why I'm posted to Rock Island. . .”

“I'm all ears.”