Patricia Potter (13 page)

She saw him in her mind’s eye, so tall even then, with an easy smile and eyes that creased with fun. She felt a flood of warmth as he stood proud in her memory, handsome and kind.

A sudden cold wind brushed her skin, jerking her back to the present. She looked again, and the children were gone. There was only a frayed piece of rope hanging from the tree, swinging forlornly in the gust of wind. Illusion. She was seeing what she wanted to see, not what was real. She was remembering what she wanted to remember, nothing more. He must have shown signs of cruelty then, but the child hadn’t wanted to see them.

Meredith shook her head. She had to rid herself of this obsession. She had to. He was of no more substance than that rotting piece of rope.

Without looking back, she found a fallen log and used it to help mount. It would be a long ride to the Parson’s.

His name was Jonathon Ketchtower, but everyone just called him the Parson, and he and Elias, a Quaker in New Orleans, were Meredith’s only two direct connections in the Underground Railroad. They kept her supplied with the list of stations for runaway slaves and kept her aware of what was going on through the network. They also gave her the encouragement and courage she occasionally needed.

The Parson was, quite simply, the best person she had ever met, and the bravest, for it was he who often braved the dogs and slave catchers to personally ferry slaves to safety.

As she rode up Meredith heard one of his dogs barking and knew he was home. She whistled as he had taught her, and the dog quieted immediately. Meredith had often wondered how he had accomplished that, but then the Parson was a miracle worker with animals.

He wore a broad grin as she reined in her horse and dismounted, and she couldn’t help but smile back. His hair was long and straight and lanky, often pushed back from his forehead by impatient hands. He had a wispy beard, which made him look somewhat benign and innocuous, and he had eyes that changed rapidly from piercing to empty on a second’s notice. No one could look more harmless, when he needed to, and no one, she suspected, was more effective.

“Merry,” he said with delight. “Come in. Have you had anything to eat?”

She shook her head. She had left before breakfast, before Evelyn could capture her to extol the virtues of Gil MacIntosh.

“Good,” he said. “I have fresh bread and some honey one of my friends has given me.”

He led the way into the small, neat hut. A braided rug covered the floor that Meredith knew opened into a large secret room beneath. There was a bare cot, neatly made, a table and two chairs, several hooks with black clothes hanging from them, and a large fireplace. That anything so small and spare could be so warm often amazed her. This rough shelter seemed more like home than her own plantation manor.

He soon had hot tea ready, and they ate comfortably together.

“Tell me about your trip,” he said as they finished, and he leaned back, lighting a pipe. Smoking, and the animals, were his sole indulgences.

“I found one man on the Graves plantation and gave him the first station, a compass, and some money. He should be going through any time,” she said. “He promised to wait a month. There might be another going with him.”

“No word of Lissa?”

“No. But I found another girl, Daphne. She was a maid at a plantation that was sold. I think the experience of being transported frightened her. She’s very shy and uncertain. Perhaps in a few months you can help her North.”

“It’s dangerous,” the Parson said. “You know we don’t advise helping slaves from one’s own home.”

“I know,” she said. “But I look at Daphne and think of Lissa and what she must have gone through.”

“Can she make it on her own?”

Meredith shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Not now. But perhaps a little time…”

The Parson leaned back and regarded her fondly. He had not been so certain of her when Levi Coffin said she would be talking to him. The Underground included few members of slaveholding families; the system was too ingrained within them, too much a part of their lives for them to challenge it. He knew there were a few who did, and they were uncommonly effective for they could usually move around more easily than the others connected with the Railroad.

Meredith had been a part of the system for five years now, and he had never been disappointed. She was exceptionally bright and mature, and she had a commitment rare in someone her age. Few young women would willingly pretend to be an addlehead and give up what should be among the richest years of their life for a friend…and an idea.

The Underground Railroad was informal, with one person learning the sympathies of another and enlisting him to help the fugitives. There was no formal organization, no written list. A member knew of another, and that second person of a third, and on and on. Several, like the Parson, were aware of a complete network and passed on information to those who needed it. He kept Meredith advised of those who might help in the areas she visited, no more. Talk was not loosely bandied about. There had never been a betrayal of the Underground Railroad, and the Parson meant to keep it that way.

“When did you get back?” he asked.

“A few weeks ago…on the
Lucky Lady.”

His dark bushy eyebrows met in a slight frown. “The
Lucky Lady?”

“You know anything about it?” she said with an interest that surprised him.

“Just rumors.”

“About the captain, no doubt,” Meredith said disdainfully. “Or whatever he is.”

“You didn’t like him?”

“A more arrogant cruel man I’ve never met,” she answered heatedly.

The Parson leaned back in his chair, obviously waiting for her to continue.

“He has a slave. He’s been crippled and whipped.”

“How do you know the captain did it?”

“He as much as admitted it,” she replied. “And the slave told my maid.”

“I’ve heard tales,” the Parson remarked thoughtfully. “You said he admitted it? You talked with him?”

“He invited Opal and me to dinner. With slave hunters.”

The Parson’s bland expression didn’t change. “That must have been interesting,” he observed.

“More like loathsome,” she replied.

His mouth cracked a small unusual smile. “Who were they?”

“Brothers, name of Carroll. I drew pictures, and wrote descriptions for you to pass on.” She pulled out the sketchpad from her satchel and handed him two sheets. He looked at them carefully, noting the bold strokes, and admiring her work. She had a wonderful eye for both people and places. That she hadn’t seen more to the riverboat captain than she had surprised him. She was usually very intuitive.

He leaned back. “Tell me more about this captain.”

“He’s obviously a rogue and a blackguard in addition to being a gambler,” Meredith said, a small flush mounting her cheeks as she remembered his kiss.

“He didn’t…try to take advantage of you?” the Parson asked hesitantly.

Meredith deliberated. Could that angry, mocking kiss be considered an advance? She knew he had done it only in retaliation for her slap. And why had she slapped him? Not for anything he had actually said or done, but more for the naked invitation in his knowing eyes. An invitation some vulnerable part of her had wanted to accept.

“No,” she said finally, but the pause made the Parson wonder.

A silence hung between them for a moment, and he said a quiet prayer. He knew Quinn Devereux, just as he knew Meredith Seaton, and he recognized the simmering emotions both held in check. They were both of a passionate nature, or they wouldn’t be doing what they were doing. But they concealed that fervor under a cause, a very worthy cause to be sure, and he feared what might happen if the cover unraveled.

He would, he realized, have to keep them apart. Already, he knew from Meredith’s flushed face that sparks had flown between the two. He raised his eyes heavenward in entreaty. He
must
keep them apart. Somehow. The problem was that both of these agents were uncommonly stubborn. God help him if they got stubborn together.

But, the Parson was devious. He had learned to be so in the ten years he had been involved in the Underground Railroad. “I think Captain Devereux could be very dangerous,” he said slowly, conviction dulling the stab of guilt at his deception. “It would be wise to avoid his boat from now on.”

She nodded. “He wanted to buy Daphne….”

For the first time, she saw surprise flicker in his eyes, and she wondered about it.

But he changed the subject and said no more about the
Lucky Lady
or Captain Devereux. Instead, he took her out to the small shed and watched her as she fed the red fox he had rescued from a trap two months earlier. It was almost well, and soon he would release it back into the wild. Then he studied her in interested silence as she sketched the playful animal and handed him the result.

“I’ll treasure it,” he said slowly. “Have you finished any more paintings?”

“I gave Elias one to sell several months ago.” She grinned suddenly, and the Parson thought how pretty she looked on the rare occasions when she smiled. “It was a rainbow…our rainbow.”

“You finally found one, did you?”

“I hated to send the painting away.”

“Perhaps you’ll find it some day.”

“Or another rainbow,” she said.

“Or another rainbow,” he agreed.

C
hapter 7

QUINN SHIVERED
in the unusual chill of the morning as the deckhands loaded dry goods bound for New Orleans. The wharfs in St. Louis were, as always, a beehive of activity. In addition to the
Lucky Lady,
one other steamboat and a number of smaller crafts, ranging from makeshift rafts to flatboats, were docked there.

He should have taken time to put on a coat, but these past days he had been seized by an impatience, even to the matter of rising in the morning.

God, but it was bloody cold for early October. He caught himself. He had tried to train himself against using “bloody,” that particularly British oath, even in his mind. But too many things were coming back now. Why, damn it? Why?

Perhaps it was the cold. The bitter, familiar cold.

He had felt little else during the months at Newgate….

It was easy to lose track of days, since he was locked up alone in a tiny cell with no window and no difference between day or night except for the changing of his guards. Letters were against the rules, he had been told, and he had bartered away his waistcoat in exchange for having a missive delivered to friends. He did not know whether it had been sent, although the guard said it had. But no one came.

He felt buried alive. The money he had with him was confiscated when he arrived at Newgate, and he couldn’t purchase any comforts, not even food or a blanket. Because he was charged with murder, heavy leg-irons were clamped around his ankles. Lighter ones were available but these were denied Quinn, for they cost a certain sum he no longer had.

Weeks after the duel, Lord Sethwyck appeared and viewed him with both hatred and satisfaction. Quinn knew he was filthy and pale and awkward with his chains. The man’s gaze moved slowly around his cell, to the hard bench that was its only furniture and the odorous can that served as a chamber pot.

A guard held a lantern that almost blinded Quinn after the darkness. He rose and walked the few feet to the bars that caged him.

The earl’s face told him he could expect no mercy.

Quinn stood defiantly under his gaze, knowing that he little resembled the immaculate American of a few weeks before. His clothes were filthy, and his face covered with whiskers. His hair, he knew, hung lank and lifeless. And yet his chin lifted with defiance.

“Your trial is tomorrow,” the earl said softly. “At Old Bailey.”

Quinn’s hands clutched the bars of his cell. He’d been charged with murder and, with the earl’s influence, he would most likely hang.

“I have an offer to present.”

Quinn looked at him skeptically.

“I don’t want my son’s name, my name, dragged through scandal,” Sethwyck continued. “Plead guilty, and I’ll see that you’re transported rather than hanged.”

“Like hell I will,” Quinn said. “I want an open trial. Your son challenged me in front of witnesses.”

The earl’s voice was cold, full of hate and venom. “It makes no difference who challenged whom. Duels are illegal in England. Besides, you will find that all the witnesses have disappeared except one who will testify you shot my son in a jealous rage…without justification. You think an English court will believe…an American against an English lord?”

Quinn’s fists tightened in frustrated rage. “You’re bluffing. Why else would you want me to plead guilty?”

“Because,” the earl said softly, “I don’t want my family name tainted. I don’t want…any unfounded rumors.” It was clear to Quinn then that the earl was afraid word would circulate that his son shot early, before the count ended. Even if the earl’s witness perjured himself, someone might believe Quinn.