She was about to scream.

He reached her in one silent lunge. Clapping one hand over her mouth, he snatched her into the corner under the stairs and waited for disaster to strike.

The woman in his arms continued to tremble. Fearing discovery, Gabriel kept his hand over her mouth, his hold gentling as she began to relax.

When she began to squirm, he tightened his hold. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he hissed in her ear. “I’m not uncovering your pretty mouth until I’m sure you can keep it quiet.”

Feeling a pain in the palm of his hand, he barely contained a yelp as he released her mouth. “Are you trying to get us both hanged?”

“Who are you?” she whispered, sounding frightened.

MILLS & BOON

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ELIZABETH WHITE

As a teenager growing up in north Mississippi, Elizabeth White often relieved the tedium of history and science classes by losing herself in a romance novel hidden behind a textbook. Inevitably she began to write stories of her own. Torn between her two loves—music and literature—she chose to pursue a career as a piano and voice teacher.

Along the way Beth married her own Prince Charming and followed him through seminary into church ministry. During a season of staying home with two babies, she rediscovered her love for writing romantic stories with a Christian worldview. A previously unmined streak of God-given determination carried her through the process of learning how to turn funny, mushy stuff into a publishable novel. Her first novella saw print in the banner year 2000.

Beth now lives on the Alabama Gulf Coast with her family. She plays flute and pennywhistle in church orchestra, teaches second-grade Sunday school, paints portraits in chalk pastel and—of course—reads everything she can get her hands on. Creating stories of faith, where two people fall in love with each other and Jesus, is her passion and source of personal spiritual growth. She is always thrilled to hear from readers c/o Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, or visit her on the Web at www.elizabethwhite.net.

Elizabeth White
Redeeming Gabriel

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Truly I tell you, whatever you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.

—Matthew 25:40

For Hannah, who has read them all

Acknowledgment

I’d like to express my gratitude to the Mobile County Public Library Department of Special Collections. The research librarians kindly supplied me with resources which provided pertinent historical details. I took some liberties to suit the story. A few real historical personages are mentioned, but most names have been changed. For an accurate history of the city of Mobile, consult www.mplonline.org/lhg.htm or The Story of Mobile by Caldwell Delaney.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter One

Camilla Beaumont cautiously opened her bedroom window and leaned out. It was one of those inky Mobile nights when warm April air met earth still cool from winter, brewing up a fog as thick as gumbo. A night when the Union blockade crouched like a sullen watchdog far out in the bay and Confederate soldiers camped under abandoned cotton shelters at Camp Beulah just outside town. A night when any civilian with a grain of sense was tucked up asleep under the breeze of an open window.

She paused with one leg out the window and took a deep breath. With practiced ease she grabbed the knotty old wisteria vine that twined around the lattice and began the climb down.

It was amazing she hadn’t been caught and sent to the prison on Ship Island. In the early days her forays had been executed with haste and blind luck. Lately, however, every move and communication were plotted with exquisite care, orchestrated by an anonymous sponsor. Camilla longed to meet him, one day when the war was over, the Yankees went home, and the Southern conscience woke up to the truth that slavery was wrong.

As she scooted into an alley behind the Battle House Hotel, a baby’s cry from an open upstairs window stopped her in her tracks. She prayed there wouldn’t be a baby tonight. Babies made her task twice as difficult and dangerous.

Shuddering, she continued down empty residential streets, slipping from behind one tree to the next—huge old oaks dripping with Spanish moss that tickled her face, magnolias just beginning to bud, and scratchy, richly scented cedars. She sneezed, then looked around, stricken with fear, breathing in and out. The fog was so dense she could barely see her hand in front of her face. When all remained quiet, she continued, knees trembling.

At the waterfront, noise and light from inside the buildings spilled out into the fog. She paused outside the Soldiers’ Library to watch the approach of two gray-uniformed soldiers. They seemed more intent on observing the ribaldry inside the gambling saloons and oyster bars than enforcing the 9:00 p.m. slave curfew.

Slouching into a bowlegged, droop-shouldered posture, she lurched out into the road. An inebriated vagrant wandering the downtown streets in the wee hours of the morning was a common enough sight. As long as he was white.

She hesitated at the corner of Water and Theater streets, peering blindly into the mist, and nearly jumped out of her skin when cold fingers tapped her cheek. She stifled a shriek with one hand.

“Now, now, Missy, I thought you wasn’t comin’.” The whining whisper was so close to her ear that she could smell the speaker’s fishy breath.

“Shh! Virgil, you nearly scared the life out of me. Come here before somebody sees us.” She grabbed a skinny arm and towed him deeper into the shadows.

Any passerby who chanced to see them would have found little to tell them apart. Much the same height, they wore the same disreputable costume—dark stocking cap, patched pea jacket, canvas pants of an indeterminate color and hobnailed boots.

“Where’s the bag?” Camilla turned Virgil around and yanked off the burlap sack slung across his back, then placed her hands firmly on either side of his vacant face. “You forget you saw me tonight, you hear?”

Virgil nodded with childish pleasure. “I ain’t seen you, Missy.”

“Good.” Camilla reached into her pocket for a coin and a slightly fuzzy toffee. “Get yourself something to eat, and I’ll sell your papers for you.”

“Yes’m, Missy.” He popped the toffee into his mouth. “You’ll bring my bag back when you’re through?”

“Haven’t I always?”

“Yes’m, shore have.” Virgil grinned, then shuffled away into the fog without a backward glance.

Camilla watched him go with a mixture of pity and gratitude. Since no one considered him capable of putting two thoughts together on his own, Crazy Virgil the Birdman could come and go as he pleased. When she assumed his identity, she was virtually invisible.

Disguise complete, she stepped into the street and continued northward to where the Mobile and Tensaw rivers dumped into Mobile Bay.

Camilla could remember when the quay of Mobile was lined with stately hulls and a forest of masts. After General Bragg forbade cotton to be shipped to the port lest the Yankees succumb to the temptation to attack, the steamers made increasingly rare appearances downriver. The docks looked embarrassingly naked these days.

But there should be at least one riverboat tied in. Camilla strained to see through the fog. There she was. The Magnolia Princess, flambeaux peering through the mist, bumped gently against the pier like a cat nudging her mistress’s skirts.

As Camilla approached, a burst of laughter reached her ears, faded, swelled again. The Magnolia Princess, one of the few pleasure boats remaining in these grim days, carried a troupe of actors and singers and dancers, as well as floating card games run by professional gamblers.

Ready to hawk her newspapers should she be noticed, Camilla stole across the boat’s gangway, darted across the lower deck and found the ladder down into the hold.

Wooden beams creaked all around her as she descended, and the smell of oil and burning pine from the stoke hole was suffocating. Sticky turpentine oozed from the frame of the boat and clung to her clothes and hands as she felt her way down the rickety ladder. She was nearly at the bottom when she felt strong hands clasp her around the waist and lift her down.

“Horace,” she breathed in relief.

“Me and the boy both here, Miss Milla, but we got to hurry. The train, she leaving in less than two hours.”

Camilla took a deep breath. “There’ll be four this time.”

She dropped the bulky bag full of newspapers, then with the two men began to examine the barrels crowded into the narrow space. At length Horace kicked one in disgust. “Porter say he mark ours with a X, but it’s so dark down here I can’t see a thing.”

Camilla wiped her sweaty face on her coat sleeve. It would be deadly to send the wrong barrels north on the train. She hesitated, then whispered, “I know you’re not supposed to make a sound, but we’re running out of time, so I want you to make some little noise so we’ll know where you are.”

There was a moment of thick quiet. All she heard was the creaking of the boat and the slosh of water against her pontoons. Then, barely audible, came a scratching sound from the barrel upon which Camilla sat. Grinning at Willie, she hopped down. When they’d found the three others, she assisted the men in hoisting them one at a time up the ladder.

Porter, their accomplice on the boat, had done his job—keeping the crew away from this end of the deck. The thick fog aided them, as well. They spoke not a word as they worked, and Camilla flinched every time one of the barrels bumped against the ladder going up. But no sound came from within any of the barrels—until they were loading the last one onto the wagon. Losing her grip, Camilla gave a dismayed little squeak.

Just in time to keep it from bursting open on the ground, Willie grabbed her end of the barrel.

As a muffled wail came from inside the barrel, Camilla flung her arms around it. “Shh, it’s all right,” she whispered through the knothole near the top. “I know you’re scared, but hold on. We’re almost away.”

Horace patted her shoulder and jerked his head toward the rail station a quarter mile or so up the quay.

Taking a shuddering breath, Camilla nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

The wagon lurched into motion.

As they rattled along the waterfront, Camilla strained to see through the twining fog. The military watch was spread thin. Maybe they’d escaped.

“Hey, you there!” A hoarse voice penetrated the darkness. “Stop where you are!”

Camilla clutched the side of the wagon as Horace drew the horses to a halt. Boots crunched on damp shells as a gray-clad watchman appeared out of the fog. She and Horace and Willie waited, letting the picket make the first move. Camilla kept her head down and pulled her cap over her face.

The soldier leaned against the wagon. “What you darkies doing out here?” He reached out and whacked Camilla on the head with a gloved hand. “What’s in them barrels, boy?”

She cowered. “Nothing, sir.”

Horace drew the sentry’s attention. “We’s just coming back from market, sir. Mistress need supplies for baking.”

“In the middle of the night? I don’t think so.” The man laughed and walked around the wagon to plant the barrel of his musket in Horace’s ear. “You all holding a voodoo ritual?”

Close to vomiting from terror, Camilla felt for her newspaper bag. “Please, sir, we been delivering—” The bag was gone. She must have left it on the boat. Think, think, think. She struggled to her feet, and her toe struck one of the barrels already in the wagon before they loaded the other four. “Oh, please, sir, don’t look in them barrels!”

“What you got there?” the man demanded. “Moonshine?”

Horace again drew fire away from Camilla. “That against the law, sir.”

The soldier turned. “It sure is, you black rascal! But I might forget I saw you out after curfew if you let me have it.”

“Sir, Colonel Abernathy get upset if we let this load go. But we might could find you some more in a couple of days.”

“Colonel Abernathy, huh? Why didn’t you say so?” The man shouldered his gun and stepped back. “I’m on duty ever’ blasted night this week. You best deliver my load within two days, or I’ll have to remember I found two darkies and an idiot running around in the middle of the night. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” chorused Horace and Willie. Camilla was too relieved to speak. The wagon started up, pitching her on her rear, where she sat hugging the closest barrel and shaking like a blancmange.

Virgil was going to be in serious trouble if she didn’t find his bag.

In the quiet darkness Gabriel Laniere—trained physician, thespian and horse wrangler who presently found himself masquerading as a minister—leaned on the rail of the aft main deck of the Magnolia Princess. It was the only pleasure boat docked among the shrimpers, oyster boats and merchant vessels in the quay of Mobile Bay. He’d waited out the noisy leave-takings of the last of the gamblers. The only sounds on the boat now were the snores of the crew huddled behind the boiler and a faint scraping sound coming from the direction of the gangplank—most likely a straggler meandering home after being left behind.

Gabriel touched the full-blown red camellia in his lapel. It had been tossed at him with a wink a few hours earlier by the “incomparable” Delia Matthews—billed as the “star of Simpson and Company,” a pleasing comedy in two acts, as well as the laughable farce The Omnibus—a symbol of her code name. Miss Matthews had indeed proved to be an actress of some versatility and ingenuity. Gabriel hoped her courier skills would match her ability to bedazzle a theater full of drunken Southern gentlemen.

What he had to report to Admiral Farragut could not wait.

The scraping noise came again, followed by a muffled grunt. Frowning, he straightened away from the rail, but paused when a deckhand appeared out of the mist that swathed the gangplank. The man carried a soft felt bag, which he tossed from hand to hand with a soft chink.

Gabriel retraced his steps and found the hatch down into the hold of the boat. As he descended the narrow ladder, rumors he’d dug up in New Orleans crawled through his thoughts. Even now he could hardly believe the words he’d encoded on the paper in his pocket. Fish boat. Underwater torpedo. Naval warfare was undergoing radical change, literally under Farragut’s nose, and Gabriel’s mission began with alerting the admiral to the fact that the engineers of this dangerous vessel had moved their secret enterprise from New Orleans to the unlikely backwater of Mobile, Alabama.

Then—search and destroy.

Some two hours later, he was still sitting on a barrel that smelled of sorghum molasses, his head clearing the overhead planks by a scant quarter of an inch. The hold ran the length and breadth of the boat, but it seemed to have been designed for the undernourished roustabouts who spent sixteen of every twenty-four hours loading and unloading bales, hogsheads, sacks and crates, and firewood for the ravenous jaws of the furnace.

He had been containing his temper by reciting the human bone and muscle systems. Which made him think of Harry Martin, who never could keep straight which was the fibia and which was the tibia. Last he’d heard, Martin was serving as a field surgeon with Grant. Probably hacking off limbs right and left.

He shifted his position and began on the muscles again. Delia Matthews had better have a good explanation for her tardiness. Admiral Farragut, who had recruited and trained him, insisted that intelligence work was five percent action, twenty percent listening and seventy-five percent waiting. Most times Gabriel did it by sheer force of will. And he didn’t mind when the objective was in sight. But endlessly waiting for a courier who should be right here on the boat—

A light tap of boots overhead interrupted his seething thoughts. Someone removed the square hatch cover, relieving the pitch-darkness. A pair of scratched and broken boots descended the ladder, then hesitated midway.

Gabriel slid off the barrel.

“Now where in creation is he?” The voice was lighter than he’d remembered it onstage. She was a cool one. Serve her right if he scared her.

He opened his mouth to utter the pass code, but a shadow loomed in the hatch.

“Who left the hatch open?” grumbled an unseen male voice. “Harley, I told you—”

The thumping of heavy boots, and Gabriel saw the woman’s panic in the tremor of her body. She was about to scream. He reached her in one silent lunge. Clapping one hand over her mouth, the other arm clamping her arms at her waist, he snatched her into the corner under the stairs. Sliding to the floor with the actress’s shaking body held close, he waited for disaster to strike.

But the mate stood at the top of the stairs, peering down into the murky darkness and muttering. Finally he turned and stomped back up the stairway. The hatch cover clanged into place, submerging Gabriel and his captive in darkness and silence.

The slim, lithe form in his arms continued to tremble. Fearing the return of the mate, Gabriel kept his hand over Delia’s mouth, his hold gentling as she relaxed. Her clothes smelled of turpentine and fish, and the small head was covered with a ragged knit cap that scratched his jaw. A good idea, as the luxuriant mass of hair would have given her away if she were seen away from the cabin area.

Squirming, she expelled a little sigh that tickled his hand.

He tightened his hold. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he whispered. “I’m not uncovering your pretty mouth until I’m sure you can keep it quiet.”

She nipped the palm of his hand.

He released her mouth, barely containing a yelp. “Why you little—” He lowered his voice. “Are you trying to get us both hanged?”

“Who are you?”

Good, she was careful. “Joshua.”

The boat breathed around them: creak of timbers, slosh of water, scent of pine resin drifting with the soft fragrance of lily of the valley. He yanked off Delia’s cap, releasing a tumble of curly hair. He lifted a handful to his face and breathed in, curling his arm more snugly around her.

“Stop pawing me and tell me what you want.”

He chuckled. “Try any more tricks and you’ll be sorry.”

Silence. Then, “I’m listening.”

“Good. I’ve got you a sermon to deliver, and you’d best do whatever it takes to get it in the hands of the man upstairs.” When she moved to get up, he tightened his arm around her. “Stay put. We have any more interruptions, I don’t want to have to dive for cover again.”

“Oh, all right.” She shifted in discomfort.

He reached into his coat for the sermon he’d composed that afternoon, then fumbled at the side of her coat. She stiffened, but allowed him to slide the paper into her pocket. “Too bad you wasted so much time getting down here, Camellia. I’d like to stay and chat, but I’ve got to get ashore before daylight.”

She gasped. Shoving his hand away, she snatched up her cap and crammed it down over her hair. She scrambled to his feet and backed toward the hatch. “I’ve got to go.”

Quietly she climbed the ladder, lifted the hatch cover and peeked out. Apparently finding the coast clear, she disappeared.

Gabriel rubbed his eyes and relaxed against the rough wall. He’d give it a few minutes before he risked his own exit from the hold.

The cipher was delivered.

Camilla scrambled over the wrought-iron fence bordering the rear of the Beaumont property. Chest heaving, she tumbled spread-eagle onto the grass and stared up at the still-black sky. She’d covered the distance from the riverboat to Dauphin at Ann Street at a flat-out run.

In four years they’d never come close to getting caught. Now they’d have to find a way to supply whiskey to Colonel Abernathy as well as that dratted sentry. She threw her arm across her eyes. When the paper in her pocket crackled, she shuddered and sat up. The man had called her by name, although he’d said it kind of funny. The message had to be from Harry, who was presently in North Mississippi, as far as she knew.

After leaving Mobile at the declaration of hostilities, Harry had chosen a different way to communicate with her each time. Once he’d placed a note in the spine of a book and sent it to Jamie. Her brother approved of Harry, even if her grandmother did not.

She staggered to her feet. Harry’s latest messenger boy was sorely lacking in manners. Yet she would endure the fright and indignity again to have a letter to read and dream over, to help her remember Harry’s face.

She glanced up as she crept toward the house. The night seemed to have lightened a bit. Thank God for the open sky. When she’d gone back into the hold of the boat to retrieve the bag, the darkness had seemed to reach for her ankles. No wonder that deckhand nearly caught her. If the ruffian who called himself Joshua hadn’t grabbed her and covered her mouth, she might’ve screamed.

At the edge of the porch she paused. Male voices murmured through the open windows. Papa was up late. That wasn’t unusual, but the summer draperies had been closely drawn, dimming the light from the room.

She pulled back into the shadows beside the porch and peered through the lace. Her father was as attached to open windows as she was. Why would he pull the curtains on a muggy spring night?

Her father spoke again, answered by another man. Gradually the conversation began to make sense. They were discussing boats, or maybe a boat. Transportation was the family business. Nothing to linger over.

Then Papa’s voice dropped so low she had to strain to hear. “You’re sure the Yanks don’t know about it?”

“I’m sure of it. We scuttled it hours before Butler followed Farragut into New Orleans.”

Papa grunted. “You have the plans?”

“Hidden in the machine shop. But remember the original model wasn’t fully operational. The propellers tended to lock without warning, and we hadn’t tested her with a full crew.” The man cleared his throat. “Finding men willing to go under water deep enough to test her distance—well, I’m not sure I’d try it myself.”

“Oh, balderdash! I’d get in the thing tomorrow, if I weren’t a foot too tall and twice that too wide.”

“I’m sure you would, Zeke.” The man sounded amused. “But even if we start building tomorrow, it’ll be a month before it’s ready to test again.”

“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!”

Chapter Two

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?

His wait in the luxurious parlor of the Rice mansion, which housed Colonel Abernathy’s staff, did nothing to cool his temper. His only consolation was the proximity of his understuffed horsehair chair to the two yawning sentries lounging on either side of the front hall. He couldn’t help wondering why this war was taking so long. Grant or Sherman ought to stroll down here tomorrow and round this bunch up like so many hound dogs snoozing in the shade.

He was beginning to lose interest when the secretive note in the voice of one of the sentries brought him fully awake.

“You hear about the delivery coming in tonight?”

“Yeah. About time, too. If I’d known there wasn’t gonna be no whiskey allowed, I’d thought twice before joining up. Where’s it coming from?”

“Somebody caught a couple darkies with the Birdman last night. First time anybody’s actually seen ’em. Promised if they’d let ’em go they’d pass the next shipment our way.”

The first sentry chortled. “The Birdman may be crackers, but he knows his blackstrap.”

Hat over his face, Gabriel settled his head on the carved rosewood frame of the chair. So the Rebel army wasn’t above dealing in contraband whiskey. Idly he wondered about the identity of the Birdman, but a sudden series of piercing shrieks from the upper floor of the house brought his head off the back of the chair. The sentries jumped.

The shrieks escalated in volume as a door opened and a harried-looking junior officer appeared at the bend of the stairs. He mopped at some beige-colored liquid dripping from his eyebrows and mustache. “Is there a Reverend Leland down here somewhere?”

The shrieks ceased as Gabriel stood. He had his story planned out. “I’m Reverend Leland. I see you’ve made my cousin’s acquaintance.”

The young man glanced over his shoulder. “That woman don’t act like nobody’s cousin—except maybe Old Nick’s. I’m pretty sure she sprung straight from the gates of Hades. Colonel Abernathy wants to see you. Right this way, sir.”

They found the colonel in an upstairs bedroom, which had been converted into an office with the addition of a desk and a couple of bookcases. The colonel’s lank brown hair stood on end, a bit of egg yolk adorned his left sideburn, and grease stains marred the military perfection of his gray coat. He rose with an agitated scrape of his chair. “Reverend! Last night my men apprehended a young woman, and she—well, she’s what you might call a bit of a handful.” The colonel blushed. “She claims to be a gentlewoman, but we know she’s been traveling up and down the river as an actress.”

Raising a sardonic eyebrow, Gabriel took the proffered chair. “Working as an actress might not be the most respectable occupation for a woman, but it isn’t illegal.”

“Of course it isn’t, but one of my men claims Miss Matthews was pumping him for information.”

“And your man was completely sober?”

The colonel picked up a perfectly pointed quill in his inkstand and began to sharpen it. “You know as well as I do it’s against army regulations to sell whiskey to military personnel.”

“Of course.” Gabriel sat back. “Would you mind filling me in on the circumstances of my cousin’s arrest?”

The colonel huffed. “It seems Private Hubbard was enjoying a bit of leave aboard the Magnolia Princess last evening, and—well, Hubbard, being a strapping young man—caught Miss Matthews’s attention. She invited him to her room after her performance.”

Gabriel kept his tone cold and incredulous. “I think I have the picture, Colonel. The scarlet woman seduced your innocent young enlisted man, plied him with liquor to loosen his tongue and proceeded to pull information out of him in order to sell it to the enemy.” The accusation sounded melodramatic and silly—the plot of a riverboat play.

“That’s about it.” Abernathy ran a finger around his collar. “Unless you have some other explanation.”

Gabriel straightened. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. The word of my clerical office should be enough to proclaim my misguided young relative’s innocence.” The colonel took a breath, but Gabriel forestalled him with a raised palm. “My family history may shed some light on our current dilemma.”

Abernathy nodded stiffly.

“Miss Matthews—Delia—is the daughter of my father’s brother, the product of his marriage late in life to a serving woman with designs on his pocketbook. When the little girl was barely walking her mother took off with a man of heftier income.” Gabriel paused to let this pathetic picture settle in his companion’s mind.

Since the colonel seemed to have forgotten the breakfast tray heaved at his chest, Gabriel embroidered the story. Delia became a misunderstood soul looking for love in a callous world. She had run away to join a traveling theater troupe, and Gabriel, as her closest male relative—her father having long since expired of a broken heart—had been searching for her ever since.

“I’d only last week received a hint of her whereabouts,” he concluded. “My mission is to see her restored to the bosom of her family.”

The colonel looked impressed. “I declare.”

Gabriel coughed delicately. “As I said, I’d nearly caught up with my cousin, and it was a simple matter to follow the trail of…shall we say, smitten officers and gentlemen.”

Abernathy smiled sourly. “The lady has a way of choosing her targets.”

“All the more reason to get her out of your hair, so to speak—” Gabriel eyed the egg yolk “—and return her to her home.”

“I must admit I don’t know quite what to do with her.” The colonel rose and went to the window. “I cannot allow my men to go unpunished when they compromise military information, and yet the lady hardly seems to have the mental discipline to remember what she heard, much less pass it into enemy hands.”

“Have you questioned her?”

“I tried, but with very little intelligible response.”

Gabriel grinned at the colonel’s back. “Perhaps if I spoke to her in your presence I might assuage your fears.”

“Yes, that’s the ticket.” The colonel turned. “Bowden!”

The young officer stuck his damp, sticky head around the door. “Sir?”

“Tell Miss Matthews we require her presence.”

Lieutenant Bowden looked as if he’d just been requested to shave a barracuda. He shifted from one foot to the other. “Yes, sir,” he said unhappily and disappeared.

Gabriel didn’t have to wait long before Delia exploded into the room, followed by Bowden, who muttered a lame “Here she is, sir” and beat a strategic retreat.

Delia Matthews in broad daylight was a sight to behold. She stood seething in the center of the room, onyx eyes snapping, fists planted on her generous hips. The tight trousers and coat she’d worn last night had been replaced by a dress with an equally tight and low-cut bodice. Gabriel was hard put to keep his clerical gaze above her neck. Colonel Abernathy didn’t even try.

She was the sort of woman whose company Gabriel most enjoyed—straightforward, without genteel coyness, secure in the power of her own beauty, yet sturdy and self-reliant. This was no hothouse flower of Southern aristocracy, ready to wilt at the threat of adversity and delighting in drawing blood with unexpected thorns. This woman was a gardenia, blooming in lush flamboyance—in fact, she even smelled like one.

She folded her arms. “Where have you been?”

Gabriel eyed his courier with grim admiration. “If I weren’t so glad to see you I’d turn you over my knee. What kind of trouble are you in now?”

Delia glared at the colonel. “If this nincompoop thinks I give two hoots how many guns come down the pike into this stinking little mud hole, it’s no wonder he’s here, instead of where the action is!”

“See here!” yelped the colonel.

Gabriel choked down laughter. “He’s just doing his job, Cousin Delia. And he said he might let you go, if you promise not to repeat anything Private Hubbard told you.” Gabriel let one eye blink closed.

Delia’s expression of outrage shifted to a blinding smile. “I told them it was a big misunderstanding. The private took me all wrong. I asked him if he was a good shot, and he started off on all this nonsense about guns. I didn’t understand half what he said.” She tripped across the room to take the colonel’s arm. Tears glistened on the ends of yard-long black lashes as she looked over her shoulder. “Cousin Gabriel, you understand why I got just a teensy bit upset when they arrested me? It was too humiliating!”

Abernathy ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Miss, if you want to avoid misunderstandings in the future, you’d best stay away from dens of iniquity like that riverboat.” He backed toward the open window. “Reverend Leland, Miss Matthews is released into your custody.”

Thunderclouds formed on the actress’s alabaster brow. “His custody—”

“Thank you, sir.” Gabriel hustled Delia out of the room.

They made it back to the Battle House as inconspicuously as was possible for a woman of Delia Matthews’s looks and temperament. As he secured a table in a corner of the sunny dining room of the hotel, Gabriel lost patience. “You’d best stop those languishing looks at every man in sight if you expect me to retain any scrap of credibility. We’re not even supposed to meet in public, and now I’ve had to invent a runaway cousin.”

Delia’s eyes blazed with resentment. “Your credibility? I’m the one who’s been under arrest for twelve hours.”

Gabriel froze in the act of hailing a servant. “Twelve hours? When did they arrest you?”

She lifted one milky shoulder. “Not long after the show. Turned out that baby-faced private wasn’t quite so naive as most of them.”

“Less than six hours ago you were not in the hold of the boat.” He said it out loud, hoping it was not true.

Delia spread her hands. “I’ve been under arrest since ten o’clock last night. Reckon there was some other woman running around loose on the boat.” When he found himself incapable of answering, her fingers fluttered to her mouth. “Oh, my. You gave the sermon to the wrong person, didn’t you?”

“Your perfume is gardenia. Not lily of the valley.”

After a strained silence, Delia leaned her head on her hand and regarded him with a quirk to her red mouth. “Fine pair we are, Reverend.”

“This is no laughing matter. What are we going to do?”

“We?” Delia’s fine black brows lifted. “I can’t deliver what I don’t have. You get the sermon back before my troupe moves upriver, and I’ll see it gets to the right hands. You don’t…” She shrugged. “You’re on your own.”

Camilla woke up feeling eighty instead of eighteen. Her head hurt, her feet hurt, and there was an evenly spaced row of bruises under her rib cage where the iron spikes of the fence had jabbed her. She rolled onto her back with a groan.

She’d argued with Portia for thirty minutes about who was going to be responsible for getting that wagonload of whiskey to Colonel Abernathy—Portia said Horace, and Camilla said she’d do it herself. Portia had held her ground and informed Camilla that, once the whiskey was delivered, there would be no more underground railroad for the Beaumont household. The Captain said the whole business had gotten entirely too risky.

The Captain. Portia wouldn’t say who arranged the transfer of slaves—first downriver into Mobile and then upstate by railroad. Probably it was some saintly old preacher who followed the teachings of Jesus and the Constitution: all men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights. Camilla pictured long, flowing white hair, maybe spectacles like Ben Franklin. A black frock covering frail shoulders and a Bible tucked under his arm. He’d preach with thunder and fire, but love everyone black and white the same. A man who’d organized the freedom runs for four years without a slipup would have to be brilliant.

“Camilla!”

Daydreams broken, she sat up. Nobody’s voice but her brother Jamie’s could carry up a carpeted flight of steps, down a hallway and through a thick oak door. He often forgot he wasn’t on the quarter deck of the Lady C.

Her bare feet hit the floor with a thump. “Can’t a person sleep around here?”

“It’s almost noon!” Jamie barked. “I need your help if I’m going to sail for Cuba this evening.”

She got moving. Caught up in the events of the past twenty-four hours, she’d almost forgotten Jamie’s planned blockade run. He’d been to Cuba before and made it back safely, but it was always a chancy thing. The Yankees took it as a personal affront when a Confederate merchant ship slipped through with arms and supplies.

But people in the South had to eat, she thought as she donned her clothing. And they had to defend themselves.

Dressed in her faded indigo day dress, she plopped down at the dresser. As she pinned her curls into bunches over each ear, she prayed for Jamie. For his safety, for his health, for his wisdom in guiding the ship. He had many men under his command. So much responsibility.

She wondered if Jamie knew about the fish boat. Probably so. Papa confided in him, and he’d always been crazy about anything that moved in the water, from tadpoles to warships.

He wouldn’t like that she knew about it. He was as overprotective as their father. But she was a grown woman now. As soon as Harry could come down south again without being blown to bits figuratively and literally, she was going to marry him and start her own family. She was tired of being under Papa’s thumb. Tired of being bossed around by Portia and restricted by Lady’s ideas of gentility.

She closed her eyes. Please, Lord, end the war quick.

She found Jamie in the foyer directing Horace and Willie in the disposition of several brass-bound leather trunks. He was dressed in a dark naval uniform, his fair hair spiking across his forehead in the humidity, sweat streaking his blond mustache and beard.

He looked up and grinned, swiping his sleeve across his brow. “There you are, Miss Slugabed. Knitting socks and writing letters last night wore you to a frazzle, I guess.”

Camilla straightened the embossed buttons on her brother’s coat. The top one hung by a thread. “Here, let me—” Her eyes widened. “Oh! Don’t move, I’ll be right back!”

She hurried to the parlor, where she’d spent several hours sewing before bedtime, and returned with a thickly quilted rectangle of gold-brocaded taffeta, folded several times and fastened with a frog closure. “I made this for your trip.”

“Thank you. Er—what is it?”

Camilla pulled Jamie down to sit beside her on the bottom step. “Look, I’ll show you.” She unbuttoned the frog. “It’s a housewife.”

Jamie laughed. “Just what I need on a cruiser.”

Camilla unfolded the fabric so he could see the row of five pockets and a flat square piece stuck through with needles and pins. “It’s got everything you need to make small repairs to your uniform. All the girls are making them for their men going off to war.”

At the wobble in her voice, his expression softened. “I’m not exactly going to war. Don’t you want me to send this to Harry?”

“I made it for you.” She gave him a mock frown. “And you’d better come back with it in person!”

“I plan to. No Yankee steamer’s going to catch the Lady C.”

Camilla slanted a glance at him under her lashes. “Suppose the Yankees were able to build a boat that could attack without you seeing it.”

Jamie leaned back on his elbows. “You mean like in the fog? Well, they wouldn’t be able to see us, either. Nobody sails in weather like that.”

“No, I mean—what if a boat could move underwater? Couldn’t they blow you up before you knew they were there?”

He exploded with laughter. “A boat sailing underwater? Oh, Milla, you’ve been reading too many penny novels.” He pulled her into an affectionately rough hug. “Either that or you truly don’t have enough to occupy that fertile imagination. Thanks for the gift.” Releasing Camilla, he refolded the housewife and slipped it into his coat pocket. He stood and offered her a broad, callused hand. “I’ll put it to good use. Now be a good girl and go pack me a lunch. Make it generous, ’cause it’ll be a long time before I get Portia’s sourdough bread again.”

Packing him a lunch was the least she could do. He was always the soul of generosity to her. On the way to the kitchen, she touched one of the little carved coral camellias dangling at her ears—her birthday present. Jamie knew how much she adored camellias, how she waited for their blooming every winter.

Portia was up to her dimpled elbows in bread dough and was not best pleased by Camilla’s interruption. “That boy picks the inconvenientest times to go sailing!”

Smiling at the anxiety behind Portia’s grumpy frown, Camilla pulled bread and cheese out of the bin and began to carve thick slices of both.

Portia heaved a sigh as she added an apple tart and some sausage left over from breakfast to the hamper. “I hope those Yankees got poor eyesight tonight.”

“Me, too. God preserve him.”

Jamie wasn’t afraid of anything, especially not a Yankee clipper. He took life exactly as it came, laughing at the worst dangers, even her question about the fish boat. Was his amusement genuine—or did it serve the purpose of hiding his thoughts? Everything with Jamie was usually right on the surface. Maybe her assumption that he knew about the boat was wrong.

She paused in the kitchen doorway, absently swinging the heavy hamper. “Portia, I heard something funny last night on my way in the house.”

Portia’s head whipped around. “Shush, little girl! Mind yourself!” She jerked her head toward the back door. “Come out this way, and we’ll walk around the house.”

As they picked their way through the kitchen vegetable garden, Portia drew close, sharing the handle of the hamper. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?” she whispered.

“I forgot,” Camilla retorted. “I was busy getting scolded!”

“Hmph. And didn’t you deserve it. What’d you hear?”

“Did you know Papa had a man in his office in the middle of the night?”

Portia gave her an enigmatic look. “If he did, it isn’t any of my business.”

“They were discussing an underwater boat. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Portia snorted. “In the book of Jonah.”

“It could happen. And Papa’s planning to get rich off it.”

Portia smiled. “He’d have a long way to go before—”

Camilla stamped her foot. “He’s financing this—this fish boat, to sell to the government so they can blow up Yankee ships.” At Portia’s quizzical look, she began to walk again. “I know it sounds incredible. They built it in New Orleans, then sank it when the Yankees took over. Now they’re going to rebuild it right here in Mobile.”

Camilla had half expected Portia to pooh-pooh the idea, much as Jamie had. But the housekeeper’s broad, smooth brow puckered. “Men and their all-fired gadgets,” she muttered. They reached the flagged walkway in Lady’s flower garden. Portia abruptly stopped and handed Camilla the hamper. “Take this to your brother, and tell him I said happy sailin’.”

“But what should I do? You know, about the boat?”

“You ain’t a baby anymore. You heard more than’s good for you, so keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open. Don’t you do anything.” Portia’s fierce gaze speared Camilla. “You hear me?”

“S-so you believe me?” Portia’s belief was infinitely more frightening than Jamie’s amusement.

Portia’s shoulders lifted. “I believe you heard your papa gettin’ up to some shenanigans. We’ll see how important it is.”

Numb, Camilla watched Portia head back to the kitchen. Eyes and ears open would be no problem. Mouth shut was another story.

Chapter Three

Gabriel shoved through the swinging doors of Ingersoll’s Oyster Bar and stood in the baking afternoon heat swinging a newspaper-laden canvas bag against his leg. Sooner or later his quarry was bound to surface.

Last night he’d returned to the riverboat with Delia and, while she went to her room to bathe and change, conducted a discreet search of the hold of the boat. This canvas sack—discovered behind the barrel he’d been sitting on as he waited in the dark for his courier—might or might not be a clue to the imposter’s identity, but it was all he had.

Embarking early this morning on a search, he’d put on his overanxious-relative face and questioned the proprietor of every establishment on Water Street. Downtown Mobile abounded in oyster houses, lagerbier and wine shops, and gambling and drinking saloons. Women were plentiful in those places, but no one admitted to harboring one dressed as a man.

He was about to start over on another round of the search when a violent tugging on his coat sleeve caught his attention. He looked down.

A scrawny little man in a red knit cap danced at his feet, beady pink eyes glinting under bristling eyebrows. “N—now—” The man’s head stretched and retracted as he struggled for words. “Now—where’d you get that?”

Gabriel stared at him. “Where’d I get what?”

The little man snatched at the newspaper bag. “You got it! I give it to Missy, and you stoled it!”

Gabriel swung the bag out of reach and found himself pummeled in the stomach by surprisingly potent punches. “Hey!” Instinctively he hooked his attacker around the neck and secured the skinny arms. He looked around panting. Shoppers and vendors watched with varying degrees of curiosity and disapproval. “If I let you go,” he said through his teeth, “will you settle down and listen to me?”

“Gimme back my bag!” howled the little man.

“I’ll give you back the blasted bag. Just shut up and let me ask you some questions.”

Forced to concede to Gabriel’s superior size and strength, the little man relaxed.

Gabriel released him. “No use asking if you’re crazy,” he muttered, straightening his clothing. “What’s the matter with you?”

The malevolent red-rimmed eyes fixed on his face. “You said you’d gimme the bag.”

“I will, I will. Come on, and I’ll buy you a meal.” Gabriel led the way back into the oyster bar and ordered coffee for himself and his bizarre guest.

The man slugged down his steaming coffee in three great slurps.

Gabriel waved away a waiter offering to refill the cup. “What’s your name, old man?”

The hot drink seemed to have taken some of the starch out of the man’s ire. He leaned back against the wooden booth. “Name’s Byrd. Virgil Byrd.”

How poetic. “What makes you think this bag is yours?”

“Is mine. It’s marked.”

“Marked? How?”

“Candy took a bite out of it one day when I forgot to feed her.”

Gabriel looked at the bag. Sure enough, there was a ragged hole in the bottom about the size of a half-dollar, through which he could see the rolled newspapers. “Who’s Candy?”

“That’s my mule. Candy.”

Gabriel had seen no evidence of any such animal. “You gave the bag to the mule?”

Byrd screwed up his face. “Naw. Candy just tried to eat it. Gave the bag to Missy. And you stoled it.”

“I didn’t steal it,” Gabriel said patiently, rubbing his aching forehead. “I found it. I suppose Missy’s some other animal in your menagerie.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about no na-jer-ee.” Pride and slavish devotion lit Byrd’s rheumy eyes. “Missy’s my friend.”

Gabriel had no idea if this was going anywhere, but what did he have to lose? “Missy’s my friend, too,” he said with an encouraging smile. “Pretty little thing with a curvy figure—” Byrd nodded cautiously. “Wearing a man’s outfit, smells like lily of the valley?”

Byrd cackled. “Yes, sir, that’s her! Smells better ’n a per-fume shop!”

Gabriel leaned forward. “That’s right. We were having a most interesting conversation last night. She had to leave before I could give her something. Could you tell me where I might find her?”

“Naw. Onliest time I see her is late at night when she comes to borry my bag.”

“You work for the newspaper?”

Byrd nodded. “And the railroad, too.”

Something popped loose in Gabriel’s recent memory. Somebody caught a couple of darkies with the Birdman last night. The two guards at Confederate headquarters this morning, discussing a load of moonshine. The Birdman may be crackers…

Clues came together as he scrutinized the wizened face across the table. When Byrd longingly eyed a tray on the shoulder of a passing waiter, Gabriel waved him over. “Mr. Byrd, would you care for some oysters?”

Camilla blew a lock of hair out of her eyes and straightened her back with a creak of corsets. The heat and humidity had frizzed her hair and dampened her dress under the arms. She had set up her sewing machine in the little room off the kitchen so she could converse with Portia and still run to answer the bell if her grandmother needed her. She’d have been smarter to find a place that would catch a breeze.

She put another length of burlap under the needle and pressed the foot treadle. No telling how many sandbags it would take to construct the redoubts that General Butler had ordered to be built around the northern and western edges of the city. Nothing she did was going to end the war. But if she didn’t help in these small ways, she would be considered disloyal, maybe even Lincolnite.

She shoved her spectacles higher on her nose. She had a lot of respect for Mr. Lincoln, even if he was a Yankee. If the menfolk would talk things over and solve things without blowing each other to smithereens, the world would be a better place. Early in the war, she’d questioned Papa about his stance on secession. Why, she wanted to know, didn’t they work things out through the legislative process, like the Founding Fathers intended?

At first he’d put her off, saying the whole thing was too complicated to explain to a child. When she persisted, he put down his newspaper and glared. “Because there’s more of them than there are of us. They refuse to let us choose the way of life that’s best for us. Every man has the right to examine his conscience and free his slaves or keep them. No Yankee lawyer or mill owner or journalist can understand the economics that drives our plantation system.” Camilla must have looked as if she didn’t understand it either, because her father removed his spectacles irritably. “Camilla, what’s going to happen to all those field slaves when they’re turned loose all of a sudden? The plantations will be bankrupt, so who’s going to support the poor creatures? They’re better off where they are.”

Camilla knew little about economics, and it seemed to her any human being was better off free, but Papa’s refusal to consider a person with black skin totally human made arguing with him pointless. She’d be switched, though, if she’d let him sell his soul by building a Confederate war vessel.

She bit off a thread and threw one more bag onto the pile growing beside her chair. The obvious solution to thwarting the construction of that boat would be to wait until it was built, then somehow sink it, like they’d done in New Orleans. Maybe the waste of time and expense would make them give up. Or maybe by then the war would be over.

A thought occurred to her that she almost pushed away. Disloyal. Crazy. Dangerous.

But she couldn’t seem to shake it, no matter how furiously she ran the sewing machine and sang hymns at the top of her voice.

She was undoubtedly stirring up trouble in her own mind. God wasn’t talking to her, and she couldn’t spy on her own Papa.

But she had already done that, however unwittingly. And look what it was leading to.

Had God allowed her to overhear that conversation so she could do something about it? Get hold of the plans to that boat and pass it to the Yankees? How could she trust some Northern agent she didn’t even know? How could she be sure he’d confiscate the submarine without destroying her family in the process?

Besides, the only Yankees she knew were Harry’s family in Tennessee—and Harry himself. She had no idea where he was. No help there.

She forced herself to sit quietly and pray. I don’t know where to start. I feel like Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, must have felt, waiting for the spies to arrive. You protected her and her family, so You can do the same for me. Just show me the way. Amen.

Sighing, she opened her eyes. In her experience, God sometimes took a long time to answer prayers, and then when He got around to it, He’d do it in strange and often uncomfortable ways.

One of the kitchen bells, attached to strings running all over the house, jangled. Camilla jumped to her feet. “I’ll see what she wants, Portia!” She hurried upstairs, running from her tangled thoughts.

Since Lady liked to have access to the everyday activities of her family and servants, her sitting-room door always stood open. Camilla skidded to a stop and made a rather breathless entrance.

A striking young man rose from his seat on Lady’s pink velvet sofa. At six feet, he seemed a giant in her grandmother’s small, elegant room. His bow was correct, but the hard angles of his face and the assessing gleam in his black eyes struck her as anything but polite.

Camilla dropped a curtsy and forced her gaze to her grandmother.

Lady inclined her head toward the gentleman. “Reverend Leland, I’d like to introduce my granddaughter, Camilla, who occasionally remembers her upbringing. Camilla, this is the Reverend Gabriel Leland, late of Bogue Chitto. We’re going to make him welcome as he begins a new ministry here in Mobile.” Lady smiled and jangled the bell again. “Close your mouth, child, and sit down. Portia will bring our tea.”

Jerking the spectacles off her face and sliding them in her pocket, Camilla obeyed. This dark young man who looked like the incarnation of Lucifer himself was a minister?

With thinly glazed disappointment, Gabriel watched Mrs. St. Clair’s young granddaughter pour tea. Virgil Byrd’s information that his “Missy” lived in the big white house on the corner of Dauphin and Ann streets had given him high hopes that he’d find the mysterious woman he sought—a woman who, granted, could be anybody from daughter of the house to a kitchen maid. To his relief, early this morning he’d been admitted as a visiting minister without question.

Mrs. St. Clair, white hair piled high, dressed from head to toe in pink, had graciously invited him into a room with porcelain butterflies floating on every surface. It always delighted her, she said, to find young people so diligent in serving the Lord and their country. At his request for an introduction to the charity hospitals and soldiers’ libraries, she regretfully confessed that her health no longer permitted her to go about as she once had. She then exceeded his wildest hopes by offering to send her granddaughter to accompany him.

But instead of the clever adventuress he’d been hoping to meet, into the room had burst this little hoyden. She couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen years old.

Mrs. St. Clair gently tapped her spoon against the fragile rim of her cup. “Tell me about your people, Reverend Leland.”

Gabriel stuck to a story he’d developed over the course of the past few years. “My father’s family are Louisiana indigo planters. My mother is a Faulkner from East Mississippi.”

“Indeed?” Mrs. St. Clair raised finely arched brows. “Perhaps my daughter, who lives in Columbus, is acquainted with the family.”

“Possibly. We’ve not visited there in several—” A strangled squeak from the granddaughter stopped him. “Miss St. Clair?” He stifled his impatience.

She mopped at a tea stain spreading across her lap. “I’m not Miss St. Clair,” she mumbled, pink-faced.

Gabriel frowned. Southern inbreeding had evidently taken its toll on the poor creature. She didn’t even know who she was.

“Camilla, the purpose of a saucer is to prevent such spills.” Amusement and affection laced Mrs. St. Clair’s admonition. “Reverend, I should explain that Camilla’s mother was my younger daughter. She is, perhaps unfortunately, a Beaumont rather than a St. Clair.”

That was when it hit him that he knew this family. Or knew of them. Beaumont. Harry Martin’s relatives. This must be the little cousin who had tagged along behind Harry and made his life miserable.

Then the girl’s expression captured his full attention. She was staring at him, mouth ajar.

For the first time, he really looked at her. His gaze went from the small capable hands clenched over the tea stain to her face. The broad, childish brow, pointed little chin, and curly hair gave her the look of a china doll. But the big caramel-colored eyes were defiant, much too knowing for a child. She recognized him. The truth began to whisper in his ear.

But how had he mistaken this underdeveloped waif for Delia Matthews?

He recovered. “Miss Beaumont, I hope I haven’t said anything to upset you. Do you know something about the Faulkner family that I don’t?”

Pink rose to her cheeks. “It’s just that you remind me of someone I met the other day. That is, you sound like him—your voice…”

So that was it. She was a sharp one, and he’d have to watch his step. “Indeed? But that’s simply not possible, as I’ve spent the past two days pursuing a rather delicate family matter.”

Mrs. St. Clair gave him an approving smile. “Most commendable to put family duty before taking on poor dearly departed Reverend Tunstall’s congregation. Is there some way in which we may be of help?”

Gabriel reluctantly gave his attention back to the older woman. “I doubt it, though I thank you. I’ve a female cousin who’s run off to join a troupe of riverboat actors. I’ve taken it upon myself to bring her back to the bosom of her family.” Camilla Beaumont’s brow puckered a little—at his mention of the riverboat? Or was it sympathy for his worry? “Forgive me, Miss Beaumont, if I’ve offended you by mentioning my cousin’s fallen state.”

She surprised him with bubble of laughter. “Mercy, I know what goes on on a riverboat. It must be rather humiliating, though, for a man of your calling to be forced to explore the nether regions of such a vessel.” The words were given a sarcastic undertone by a shrewd curling of her lips.

He met her dancing eyes and acknowledged her hit with a slight smile.

“Camilla, watch your tongue!” said her grandmother sharply. “Reverend, I believe I can help. Deplorable as it is, the soldiers spend large amounts of time and money on the riverboats, and my charitable work extends mostly in the hospitals and soldiers’ libraries. Camilla will take you around to visit the soldiers there, and you may easily make inquiries as to your cousin’s whereabouts.”

Camilla drew back, frowning. “Lady, you know I’ve got to finish the sandbags before the week is out. You could provide Reverend Leland with a letter of introduction—he’ll easily find his way around!”

“That hardly sounds neighborly,” said Mrs. St. Clair. “I’d go myself, but these old legs aren’t as spry as they used to be. The sandbags can wait.”

“But, Lady—”

“Miss Beaumont,” Gabriel interrupted smoothly, “I’d be honored if you’d consent to accompany me. Your charming presence could only promote my standing in the city.”

Camilla responded with a skeptical glare.

Mrs. St. Clair shook an arthritic finger. “And you’ll go with good grace, my girl, first thing next week.”

“All right.” Camilla jerked at the lace on her cuffs. “I’ll do it, but I don’t have to like it.”

Chapter Four

Squeezed between her grandmother and her fourteen-year-old brother Schuyler in the family pew the next morning in church, Camilla watched Reverend Leland walk past, affecting a limp and leaning romantically on a Morocco cane. He stood in the aisle looking for a place to sit, until Lady called his name and invited him to sit with them.

He shook hands with Schuyler and her father, his smile grateful and a bit bashful. Oh, he knew how to charm them all.

She’d known somehow that he would be here today. His presence was entwined with God’s answer to her prayer, this stranger with the beautiful face and whiskey-smooth voice. It made her afraid and angry and all mixed up, sitting here beside him in church, even with Lady seated between them.

He was all kindness and sincerity on the outside, and Lady seemed to think he was God’s gift to the Christian community of Mobile. But he’d all but admitted he’d been on that boat, holding her close. And now he’d come after her.

Halfway through the service, she sneaked a glance at him. He was listening to Brother Lewis’s dull-as-ditchwater sermon with rapt attention. His dark hair was slicked back, the hard angles of his face piously composed, his shirt collar white and starched.

What was she supposed to do when he tried to get her alone? Yesterday he looked like he wanted to eat her for lunch…

As if he felt her gaze, Reverend Leland suddenly looked at her. The expression in his black eyes was warm, but she still felt chilled somehow.

God protect me from this man.

He smiled and returned his attention to the minister.

After the closing hymn, Camilla stepped away from him, but Lady snagged her elbow before she could slip out of the pew.

“Reverend Leland, I hope you’ll join us for dinner. Portia’s pork roast and mashed potatoes are famous all over the county.”

“I’d be delighted!” The reverend’s white smile was made more engaging by one tooth turned slightly crooked.

Determinedly unengaged, Camilla pulled at her arm.

Lady squeezed it harder. “Camilla will keep you company on the way.”

“I appreciate your hospitality.” The reverend’s eyes sparkled. “But I’m afraid I rode to church today. My horse might object to an extra passenger.” When Lady cackled, he smiled at Camilla. “However, I will claim a carriage ride at some time in the near future.”

“She will look forward to that with great pleasure.” Lady shooed Camilla toward the door. “We’ll go on ahead and see you as soon as you can get there.”

Sunday dinner in the Beaumont household was a prolonged affair, involving much conversation and laughter. Camilla watched Reverend Leland, seated across from her, flirt gently with her grandmother, filling Jamie’s absence with an agreeable mix of self-deprecation, humor and thoughtfulness. She had to admit he was fascinating in the way of a beautiful and dangerous animal.

Without compromising her own secrets, it was going to be difficult to prove Reverend Leland wasn’t what he purported to be. But there had to be some way.

She cleared her throat and braced herself for the impact of his eyes. “Reverend, please forgive my curiosity, but I noticed you carry a cane. Have you perhaps sustained a war wound?”

“Camilla!” Lady frowned. “That is a very personal—”

“It’s quite all right, Mrs. St. Clair. I don’t mind admitting to an injury gained in honorable service of my country.” The reverend smiled, a bit of a challenge in the dark eyes.

“Indeed?” Camilla said sweetly. “Perhaps you might entertain us with a description of your exploits on the battlefield.”

He shook his head diffidently and rather sadly. “I don’t think you’d find our humiliation at Shiloh appropriate dinner-table conversation. I was one of the few to escape with my life.”

A flat and embarrassed silence fell.

Camilla’s father glared at her. “Perhaps, Reverend Leland, you’d join me on the courtyard for an after-dinner cigar?”

“Certainly, sir.” Reverend Leland, leaning heroically on his cane, accompanied her father out of the room, Schuyler following on their heels.

Lady rapped a spoon against the table. “I would like to know, young lady, what brought on this disagreeable attitude toward the first presentable young man to cross our paths since the war started.”

“Lady, doesn’t it strike you as odd that a handsome and healthy young man would spend his life riding around the country preaching?”

“It rather strikes me as commendable.” Lady wagged the spoon. “He has paid his dues in military service and now spends his time serving God. Is there some unwritten law that ministers must be short, fat and bald?”

Camilla shrugged. She refused to swallow that ridiculous story about a runaway cousin. And if he was wounded, she was Tatiana, the Queen of the Fairies.

Gabriel sprawled in a wicker chair, watching his host puff with great satisfaction on a fine Cuban cigar. Though his original strategy had been to maneuver Camilla Beaumont into a tête-à-tête, he was satisfied to spend the afternoon with a man of Ezekiel Beaumont’s standing in the transportation industry.

“Terrible losses at Shiloh,” Beaumont was saying. “You were lucky to escape with your life.”

“Yes, sir, God was on my side.” Gabriel smiled as Schuyler chose a cigar from the humidor and the elder Beaumont tweaked it out of his hand.

The boy reddened. “Do you plan on going back into service, sir?”

“I’d like to, but don’t know if they’ll have me anytime soon.” Gabriel rubbed his upper right thigh.

“Next birthday I’m going to enlist.” Schuyler visibly ignored the sudden tide of red which suffused his father’s face.

Gabriel intervened. “You’d be smarter to remain here. You and your father could do more for the war effort with the railroad than by risking your hide on a Yankee bullet.”

Schuyler rolled his eyes as if he’d heard it all before. But Ezekiel jabbed the air with his cigar. “Absolutely right! I’d like to know where the army would be without a fast way to move rations, arms and men.”

Gabriel smiled lazily. “So the army plans to use the Mobile and Ohio?”

Schuyler snorted. “In this little backwater?”

“Listen and you might learn something, boy,” Ezekiel growled. “With Corinth in Union hands, we’re the only Confederate rail link between east and west. You want to see some action this summer? Then this little backwater is the place to be!” He let out a satisfied billow of smoke.

Gabriel barely registered Schuyler’s snort of disbelief. For the moment he’d said all he could without arousing suspicion, but he could see several ways to sift this family for useful information. He was going to have to do it, however, against the antagonism of Miss Camilla Beaumont. For more reasons than one, he wished he could undo his encounter with her on the riverboat.

Chapter Five

Gabriel drew up his hired calash in front of the Beaumont home. After securing the horse to the hitching post, he climbed the steps and knocked briskly at the double doors. Camilla Beaumont had avoided him for nearly a week, one excuse after the other keeping her busy. He’d had little to do but prowl the streets with an ear out for information about the fish boat.

Fortunately, Mrs. St. Clair had all but commanded her recalcitrant granddaughter to drop everything and accompany him on a tour of the military hospitals.

The butler, Horace, ushered Gabriel into the parlor, where he found Camilla—still rather schoolgirlish in appearance with a pair of dainty gold-rimmed spectacles perched on her small nose—sitting with listless boredom in a wing chair. Across the room a decorative blonde played something classical on the pianoforte.

The music stopped as the young woman lifted her hands from the mother-of-pearl keys with exaggerated confusion. Camilla stood and gave Gabriel a grudging hand to press.

“Miss Beaumont, a pleasure to see you,” he mur-mured, taking her hand to his lips. He held it there, enjoying her pink cheeks, tight lips and futile tugs against his fingers.

Once her hand was released, she shoved it into her pocket. “Charmed,” she said, teeth together.

The young woman at the pianoforte cleared her throat. “Camilla, why didn’t you tell me you were expecting company?”

“My manners must have gone begging. Reverend Leland, I’d like you to meet Miss Fanny Chambliss.” That social chore performed, Camilla retreated to the window.

Gabriel bowed over Miss Chambliss’s hand, keeping it only for the requisite two seconds. “The Lord has seen fit to honor me this day with two beautiful young ladies to welcome me.”

To Gabriel’s amusement, Miss Chambliss accepted this as her due. Simpering, she arranged her silken skirts upon a Belter rosewood sofa whose rich wine-colored upholstery flattered her golden curls and gentian-blue eyes. “Camilla, what a charming addition to our acquaintance.”

Gabriel didn’t have time for pretty distractions. “If you’re ready, Miss Beaumont, my carriage is waiting.”

Her almost-brown eyes glittered. “I’m sure Fanny will like to join us. I’ll just run get my hat.”

Gabriel gently gripped her elbow. “I’m sorry, but my carriage only holds two.”

Rage flared in Miss Chambliss’s eyes before she looked down with sweet disappointment. “Camilla’s always the lucky one. Maybe another time?” She gave Gabriel a flirtatious smile.

“I’ll hold you to it.” Gabriel smiled to take the sting from his rejection. “Your hat, Miss Beaumont?”

“I’ll get it. See you tomorrow, Fanny.” She jerked her elbow free and rushed up the stairs.

By the time Camilla returned, Fanny Chambliss had taken her reluctant leave. Gabriel eyed Camilla’s outdated jocket hat as he escorted her out to the calash. The hat’s round crown and curved brim emphasized her broad, smooth brow and big eyes, and he wondered if she deliberately played up her babyish looks.

As he tooled the calash down the bumpy brick street, she sat beside him stroking the fringe of her paisley shawl, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Miss Beaumont—may I call you Camilla?—it was kind of you to put aside your sandbag enterprise long enough to accompany me today.”

His ironic tone brought her gaze to his face. “You may call me anything you like, if you’ll just leave me alone.”

“Do you always run from confrontations? I would not have thought it of you, considering your nocturnal adventures.”

“Let me out of this buggy.” She grasped the door handle.

Slapping the reins, he gave a whistle. The startled horse jerked into a faster gait. “Oh, no, Miss Camilla. We’re going to talk, whether you like it or not.”

“I thought you wanted to visit hospitals!”

“We’ll do that, too, but first you’re going to answer some questions. I don’t know what you were doing on that boat dressed like a boy, but you’ve got something that belongs to me, and I want it back.”

“You’re the one who shoved it into my pocket, Reverend Leland. And, for that matter, what were you doing on the boat?”

Gabriel glanced at her coolly. “I told you, I was searching for my cousin. Sometimes in order to reach the spiritually lost of this world—”

She interrupted with a rude noise. “I don’t know what you are—bootlegger, slave smuggler, something else entirely for all I know—but you are no minister.”

He looked at her with real admiration. “That’s putting it with no bark on it. What makes you think I’m not a minister?”

“Besides the way you put your hands on me?” Her eyes sparked hot gold. “You’re too young and—” She gulped and tugged her hat brim down.

Gabriel smirked. “You’d have to be the first to admit that looks can be deceiving. Did you even look at that paper I gave you very much by mistake?”

“Of course I looked at it.”

“And what was it?”

“It looked like a sermon.”

“And that’s what it was. My sermon for my first service at the Methodist church this Sunday. I could write it again. But I’m asking you, as politely as I know how, to give it back to me.”

“You may be a preacher, but you are no man of God.”

“And you may be a female, but you are no lady.”

She gasped and then grinned at him, a dimple hovering at one corner of her mouth. “You sound like my grandmother.”

He stared at her for a moment, then growled, “Where’s the hospital?”

“Corner of the next block. Turn here.”

“That’s Barton Academy.”

“It was, before the war started. I thought you were from out of state.” Her bright-eyed look held a challenge.

“I visited here when I was in college.”

“Really? Do you know my brother Jamie?”

“Yes, but I doubt he’d know me. We ran in different circles.” He drew up the horses outside the hospital livery and got down to help Camilla from the carriage. “I did meet your cousin, Harry Martin.”

“Harry!” She turned and gripped both his hands. “I knew that message must have been from him! But what does it mean? Oh, please tell me how to read it!”

It took him a moment to realize she thought the sermon was a message from her cousin.

He glanced around. Military personnel, medical staff and visitors crisscrossed the hospital grounds. “This isn’t a good place to talk.”

Blushing, she released his hands. “It’s just that it’s been so long…” She straightened her shawl. “We’ll go inside. Lady said I should introduce you to Dr. Kinch, the hospital administrator.”

Every muscle in Gabriel’s body tensed as he followed Camilla up the broad stone steps fronting the building and held the door for her. The confrontation with Dr. Kinch was inevitable. He almost looked forward to it.

Dr. Joseph Kinch shook hands with Gabriel and gave Camilla an arch smile. “Miss Beaumont and her grandmother are two of our most ardent fund-raisers and visitors to the hospital.” He pinched Camilla’s cheek, making her squirm. “Quite the angel of mercy.”

Gabriel bowed. “The merit of your work is well-known, Doctor.”

Camilla opened her mouth to ask if the men had met before, but something in Gabriel’s hot gaze stopped her. Secrets. She’d better tread carefully.

Gabriel’s smile had an edge. “I’ve heard about your research into the causes and treatment of yellow fever. A large amount of my time is spent burying its victims and ministering to bereaved families. Seems to me the disease has carried off as many hale young fellows as the war.”

Dr. Kinch inclined his leonine head. “’Tis an unfortunate truth. My goal in life is to eradicate this elusive killer. I have my suspicions of the source, but have yet to prove it.”

“I pray for your success. Many of my former parishioners have expressed a desire to fund your research—when the war ceases to drain the Southern economy.”

“I regret to say that the war has conscripted my most promising medical students,” said Dr. Kinch. “Research is now confined to my own sporadic attempts, in between running the hospital and supplying field surgeons.” He sighed. “Medicines, especially quinine, are getting harder to come by every day.”

“Are the cases of yellow fever up, then, Doctor?” Camilla asked.

“I’m afraid so. Since New Orleans fell and refugees have descended on Mobile, the hospital is full to overflowing. We could hardly turn away the poor souls, and yet…”

“Your mercy is commendable.” Gabriel’s lips twitched.

Camilla set her teeth. “Reverend Leland, I promised to read mail to the poor soldiers here. Perhaps we should attend to our business.”

The reverend gave her a sardonic look. “An angel of compassion, indeed. Dr. Kinch, it’s an honor to make your acquaintance.”

With Gabriel behind her, Camilla entered the ground-floor ward and led the way among the patients. These visits broke her heart, but she had to come. She had no formal nurse’s training, but the doctors were glad to get any help available.

She was very conscious of Gabriel’s dark presence. Once or twice he seemed about to speak, but when she turned to look at him, he avoided her gaze and clasped his hands behind his back.

Camilla stopped at the bed of a seven-year-old girl who had caught her leg in a coil of baling wire. “This is Lecy Carrolton—” She gasped as two strong hands clasped her elbows and moved her aside.

Gabriel knelt beside the cot and gently brushed the hair back from Lecy’s hot forehead. Her delicate brows remained knit in pain, her eyes closed. “Hello, little one,” he murmured, “having a bad dream?”

Silken lashes fluttered, then lifted. “Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“How long has she been like this?” Gabriel’s hands gently explored the swollen angry flesh above and below the bandage.

“Her daddy brought her in over a week ago,” Camilla said, nonplussed. “She doesn’t seem to be getting better, no matter what the doctors do. They’re afraid they’re going to have to—” She bit her lips together and brushed the little pink toes of Lecy’s good foot. “We need to pray for her.”

“We need to do more than pray for her.” Gabriel looked around and snapped his fingers at an ancient orderly in a stain-spattered coat. “You there! Bring me some—” He caught Camilla’s eye. She stared at him wide-eyed. He raked his hand through his hair.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

He glanced at Lecy. “If the oafs would treat their instruments with carbolic acid before they operate, most of these gangrenous infections would never occur. I’ve—I’ve followed enough field surgeons to know that.”

“Dr. Kinch is one of the finest surgeons in the South. I’m sure he’s doing all he can.”

“He’s doing all he can to line his pockets.” Gabriel rose and stalked toward the doorway.

Camilla hurried after him and grabbed his arm. The muscles were corded, his expression angry. “I won’t let you speak that way about the greatest doctor who’s ever lived in this area. You don’t know him.”

His black glare scorched her. “You’re right. I don’t.”

Camilla dropped her hand. “What’s carbolic acid? It sounds dangerous.”

Gabriel took a breath and looked away. “It’s an antiseptic. If it’s sprayed onto wounds and the instruments used to operate, it somehow keeps infections from growing. Nobody really knows why.”

“Do you think we could get some? Maybe Dr. Kinch doesn’t know there is such a thing.”

“Maybe he doesn’t.” Gabriel was silent for a long moment, then gave her an enigmatic look. “Listen, Miss Camilla, I’d like to help that little girl, but I’m just a traveling preacher. If you want to inquire about carbolic spray, go right ahead, and I’ll try to convince your famous doctor to try it.”

Camilla stared at him, confused by his sudden coolness. “We should help Lecy if we can.”

He smiled. “Ah. There’s the rub. Should and can are often mutually exclusive.”

As Gabriel helped her into the buggy and started the horses toward home, Camilla’s heart was heavy. She hoped her unhappiness had nothing to do with the door Reverend Gabriel Leland had just very firmly shut in her face.

The sun was going down and mosquitoes were beginning to spread out from the swamps as Gabriel made his way on horseback down to his uncle Diron’s shack on Dog River. He couldn’t stop thinking about that little girl in the hospital with the infected foot. Maddening that, without the necessary medicines, he could do so little. He could only hope that Camilla would be able to locate the carbolic spray. Then he would think about the risk of exposing his identity by bringing himself so overtly to the attention of Dr. Kinch.

He tied Caleb to the hitching post outside, stepped over an emaciated hound lying across the doorjamb and entered the shack without bothering to knock. This time of day, Uncle Diron wouldn’t be indoors anyway.

“Uncle!” He felt his way through the dark, obstacle-strewn one-room shanty. “It’s Gabriel!”

He wasn’t surprised that there was no answer. The old man was all but deaf.

The spring screeched as Gabriel shoved open the screen door and stepped out onto the back porch. Diron’s iron-gray curls rested against the back of a cane-bottom rocker, the broken leather boots propped against one of the skinned pine posts supporting the porch. Huge, knotty hands wielded a bone-handled knife against a small chunk of cedar with delicate precision.

Gabriel approached the rocker and stepped into the pool of light cast by an oil lamp on the porch rail. The old man looked up, his rugged face lighting with pleasure as the knife blade flicked away into the handle and clamped Gabriel in an unabashed bear hug.

Then just as strongly thumped him on the ear.

“Ow!” Eyes watering, Gabriel backed up a pace. “What was that for?”

Diron’s black eyes sparkled like marbles beneath bristling gray brows. “Staying away so long without writing, you good-for-nothing whelp! All that highfalutin education, and you can’t even put pen to paper to let your old uncle know you’re alive.”

Gabriel touched his stinging ear. “Uncle, you know you can’t read.”

“Could always find somebody to read it to me.” The old man lowered himself into the rocker with a grunt and jerked his chin toward the other chair. “Sit down, boy.”

Gabriel obeyed. His father’s brother had always been crusty. “I’m sorry I lost touch. I figured you’d be better off without me making trouble.”

Diron snorted without bothering to deny the charge. He flicked the knife open and went back to work on the figure of his dog, Ajax. “You’ve grown into a man.” Diron glanced at Gabriel with a sly smile. “Do the women still follow you around in droves?”

“Haven’t had much time for women lately.” But a vision of a curly haired, golden-eyed moppet floated through his brain. In truth, he’d thought about little in the past few days but the fact that Camilla Beaumont had assumed his sermon was a message from her cousin, Harry Martin. Which meant she had been corresponding with a Federal officer.

And her papa didn’t know.

“Uncle, I’ve got to ask you something.”

“Tell me where you been for ten years, then you can ask me questions!”

Gabriel sighed. “Well, for the first couple years I roamed up and down the rivers. Gambled away what money I had left. Then I decided a job might be in order, so I went west and worked a few ranches. Punched cows so long I’m plumb bowlegged.”

Diron looked skeptical. “With your education—herding cows?”

“Uncle, the cows don’t care whether you spout Latin declensions or sing bawdy-house ditties.” Gabriel folded his arms. “An education wasn’t anything but a drawback in most of the places I’ve been.” He held up a palm. “I don’t regret it, uncle. I appreciate everything you sacrificed to help me get through college and medical school. It just—didn’t work out. I’m sorry.” He rose and moved to the edge of the porch, where he stood looking out at the river. “I’ve given up medicine for religion.”

Behind him Diron gave a disbelieving snort. “What? Why?”

“They threw me out of medical school at the end, remember? No diploma, no license. I had to find another profession, so I’m riding the circuit as a preacher now.” It was time to address the delicate topic of his identity. Gabriel was grateful for the darkness hiding his expression. “And I changed my name to Leland—so make sure you call me that.”

“You changed your name and got religious.” Resentment laced Diron’s tone. “So I’m not good enough for you anymore.”

“You know that’s not true, uncle.” Gabriel gentled his voice, tamping down the temptation to blurt out everything to his mentor and foster father. He turned and found the old man bowed over his whittling. “I mean, I am religious, and I need to distance myself from what I used to be. But you’ll always be my favorite old man.”

Diron grinned a little. “Some of the tales I could tell about you…”

“Uncle—”

“Aw, don’t worry. I can keep a secret when I have to.”

Gabriel turned sharply to study his uncle’s shadowed face. He looked around more closely. Even in the uncertain light of the flickering oil lamp, he could see improvements around the old shack. New steps with fresh paint. The pier, which had been a mess last time he was here, extended gracefully out into the river, a sturdy fishing boat bobbing against it. “What’ve you got into around here? Fishing’s never been so lucrative.”

Diron shrugged and flicked his knife across the pine. “I’m doing some work for Chambliss Brothers.”

Gabriel leaned against the post and stuck his hands in his pockets. “There can’t be many men in this part of the country who’re making money instead of losing it.”

“Beckham Chambliss is a smart businessman.” The old man grinned. “Strikes when the iron’s hot.”

Gabriel shook his head at the pun. “I suppose the war brings in machine shop trade.”

“Now you’re thinking. The secret’s providing what the military needs.” With a cagey look Diron leaned toward Gabriel. “If you’re interested in investing, I could put in a word.”

“I might, if the basic funding is secure.”

“As secure as it gets this day and age.”

“I don’t know.” Gabriel pretended to hesitate. “Who’s the bankroller?”

“Swear you’ll keep it to yourself.”

Gabriel nodded.

Diron lowered his voice as if Ajax might carry tales. “The major stockholder of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.”

Gabriel released a soundless whistle. Ezekiel Beaumont, then, was a man with not just a finger but an entire fist in the Confederate military pie.

And his daughter had intercepted a sensitive Union document. God have mercy if she let that document get into the wrong hands.

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