Redeeming Gabriel (13 page)

The tone of Camilla’s voice more than her words stopped him. “I believe in the United States of America. I believe in the strong protecting and defending the weak. I believe in myself.”

“Those are good things.” She hesitated, her gaze intent on his face. “But do you believe God has a purpose for you—that He loves you enough to give His Son for you?”

The glow of Camilla’s face, the simple question filled with power and eloquence, caught him. He’d heard several hundred hellfire-and-brimstone sermons in his lifetime, but preachers didn’t often mention God and love and purpose in the same sentence.

He avoided Camilla’s tender eyes. She made him want to believe. “We’d better get moving. I’ve got to figure out a way to get us on the northbound packet without crossing paths with the military.” He stood abruptly.

Camilla bowed her head.

As they slipped across the gangplank of the ferry, Gabriel glanced at his companion. Her face was composed, but a couple of telltale streaks tracked through the dust on her cheeks.

He told himself it was time she grew up.

Chapter Ten

B
y the time the packet chugged through Pinto Pass, just off the quay of Mobile, heavy clouds had moved off the gulf, hiding the setting sun and threatening to dump their contents on the city. The leaden atmosphere suited Camilla’s mood.

People believe what they want to believe.

Gabriel’s cynical observation clanged through her thoughts. If it was true, then there was no hope for anyone. All mankind must be captive to experience. Where did faith fit in? Where did God Himself fit in?

Camilla followed Gabriel along Water Street, hurrying to keep pace with his loose, swinging stride. He’d insisted on accompanying her home. They both knew there was going to be trouble when they got there. Camilla’s stomach clenched with apprehension.

“What am I going to do about my clothes?” She tugged Gabriel’s coat sleeve. Except for a shadow of beard, he looked the picture of immaculate propriety. She knew she must look like a proper wild woman.

Gabriel stopped to survey her in the twilight. They had entered the residential block of Government Street, and the noise of Saturday night downtown had faded until the only sounds were cicadas singing in the trees and leaves rustling with the brewing storm. “You
are
a mite dirty, Miss Beaumont.”

“You know what I mean! Lady will lock me in my room for a month if I come in dressed like this. I should go in through my window, change my clothes—”

“You should march in and tell the truth. The more lies you tell, the worse it gets.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Says the arbiter of the truth himself!”

“Absolutely.” He grinned. “Come on, I’ll be right there with you.” He bounded up the front steps and pulled the brass knob of the doorbell.

Portia swung the great mahogany door wide. “Reverend Gabriel! Miss Camilla!” She fisted her hands at her hips. “Where in the name of Jehoshaphat you been all day? Your papa’s fit to be tied!”

Camilla heard her grandmother call from the direction of the drawing room. “If that’s Camilla, tell her to present herself immediately.”

She looked at Gabriel. “We’re in for it now.”

He gave her a gentle shove toward the doorway. “Remember, tell the truth.”

Camilla lifted her chin, swept off her cap and marched toward the drawing room. Her boots thunked loudly on the hardwood floors, the sound of Gabriel’s footsteps behind her comforting.

She burst into the drawing room. “Lady, I’m sorry I missed the meeting, but Reverend Gabriel and I—Oh, gracious…”

Several gray-clad officers stared at her, teacups halted halfway to whiskery faces. Scones and brightly colored jellies and delicate petits fours filled a flowered tray on the center table.

She found her grandmother, a splash of saffron amidst the sober uniforms of the men, seated in the Sleepy Hollow chair, a silken fan hiding her expression. After several beats of silence, Lady snapped the fan shut. “Camilla, as you can see, we have houseguests.” She turned to a gentleman with an enormous amount of braid decorating his uniform. “General Forney, I’d like you to meet my granddaughter. Camilla is quite famous for her grand entrances.”

Camilla sat across the Sunday-morning breakfast table from her grandmother. Head propped against her hand, she idly moved her grits from one side of her plate to the other.

Lady cleared her throat. “You look lovely this morning.”

Camilla looked up with a small smile. “Thank you, Lady.” She wore her best jonquil gauze gown, with her mother’s locket fastened round her throat and the camellia earrings dangling from her lobes. Her curls were caught at her nape with a pearl clasp. Certainly she was in better looks than last Saturday evening when she had humiliated herself in front of all those soldiers.

The grits took another excursion across the plate.

“You’ve been as blue as a barefoot Eskimo ever since you got back from Fort Morgan,” said Lady with a frown. “I hope you’re not coming down with the fever.”

Camilla shook her head. “I’m just tired. It’s an honor to have General Forney recovering here with us, but two invalids—him and Jamie—is a lot of extra work.”

Lady reached over and lifted Camilla’s chin. “I don’t think it’s fatigue causing that pensive face.”

Camilla felt her cheeks heat.

Lady sat up. “It’s Reverend Leland, isn’t it?”

Camilla turned her face away to hide her chagrin. “He could have come to inquire after Jamie.”

“As a matter of fact, he did and asked if he could talk to you at your earliest convenience.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lady sniffed. “I just did. I suggested he take you out this very afternoon after church, for a drive down the Bay Shell Road and a picnic.”

“Without asking me? Jamie will expect me to read to him this afternoon—”

“As church starts in less than an hour, it’s too late to back out.” Lady held out a hand. “May I borrow your butter knife, dear? Mine seems to have disappeared.”

Camilla picked up the knife and gasped. It was upside-down. Portia had been passing “railroad” messages to her this way for years.

Lady frowned. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” Camilla pushed back her chair. “I’m not feeling well. You go on to church without me.”

Lady forestalled Camilla as she started to rise with a commanding hand on her arm. “What’s in that knife?”

“Nothing!”

“Give it here.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s just a knife.”

“Then you won’t mind letting me see it.”

The day she’d dreaded for years had arrived without warning. With a shaking hand, Camilla laid the knife in her grandmother’s soft palm.

Lady deftly unscrewed the blade of the knife. She held the halves in her two hands and looked at Camilla, who waited, lips pressed together. Lady pulled a small roll of paper from the handle. She scanned it, then held it out to Camilla.

Swallowing tears, Camilla shook her head. “I left my spectacles upstairs. Will you read it to me?”

Surprise flickered in Lady’s eyes. She hesitated, then unrolled the paper again. “‘My dear Camilla, I pray that this letter reaches your eyes only—’”

Camilla snatched the paper and tried in vain to read the cramped script. Tears of relief further blurred her vision, but Harry’s signature swam at her from the bottom of the page. Lady’s discovery of her correspondence with her cousin was very bad indeed, but at least the secret of the underground railroad was still safe. “It’s from Harry,” she said foolishly, handing the letter back to her grandmother.

Lady smiled slightly and smoothed the paper. “‘Your eyes only,’” she repeated, “‘for my entire regiment could be endangered if this falls into the wrong hands. But I knew you would be wondering what has become of me since our last communication. I know it must be difficult for you to keep our secret. I trust that your affections have not changed. Mine have only grown stronger as the months have passed and as the danger has increased.’

“‘Rumor says Grant has set his sights on Pascagoula. This causes me great anxiety, since it is uncomfortably near Mobile. Grant is an ambitious and intrepid commander. I pray your family will remain safe, and that Uncle Ezekiel will have the sense to evacuate in the event of attack.’” Lady’s voice faltered. “‘Corinth was a bloodbath, as you can imagine—’Camilla, he was at Corinth!”

“Was he hurt?” Camilla held her stomach in an agony of suspense.

“No, he says, ‘I was kept miraculously from harm. I have been working around the clock, sewing bodies back together and removing parts that could not be redeemed. Oh, Camilla, may God spare you from sights that I have seen these past three days! I am worn to the bone, but as soon as the wounded have been posted to the nearest hospital, I will join my regiment in the march south. Grant is determined to control Southern waterways. I can think of nothing more horrible than invading a part of the country almost as dear to me as my home county in Tennessee. But, my dearest Camilla, I cannot deny my duty to country. I beg you to flee, should our Union forces threaten Mobile. I will pray for you every day until I hear that you are safe. Meantime, remember me to our Father in heaven. Your Harry.’”

Camilla pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. She blinked tears away and realized Lady had dropped the letter.

Her grandmother’s closed eyes looked sunken with age, the lids thin as parchment. “That it should come to family marching against family. A healer turned soldier.”

“I’m sorry,” Camilla said in agony. “You know I’ve always loved him.”

“Like a brother,” Lady said harshly. “But he left us and went back to Union Tennessee. Harry made his choice, Camilla. He chose the other side.”

“That doesn’t change his love for us—his love for me.” Camilla felt the blood flow to her cheeks.

“Look at me, Camilla.” Her grandmother’s pale eyes were fierce. “Remember this—war changes more things than you can comprehend. If we come to the end of this nightmare, and your estimation of Harry has not changed—if you can revere him above any man you’ve ever known, if you’re convinced he’s God’s best choice for you—then you may marry him with my blessing. But please, my dear one, do not let pity or sentiment or even loyalty cheat you of that best choice. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Lady.” But Camilla wondered if she did understand.

Gabriel handed Camilla down from the high seat of the open gig he’d hired from the Battle House livery, then tied the horse to a mimosa bending close to the shell road leading out to Spring Hill.

“Lovely weather for a picnic,” she said primly and marched toward the creek meandering a few yards away.

“Indeed it is.” Gabriel tossed his felt hat into the rear of the gig, removed his coat and followed Camilla with a blanket and picnic basket hooked over one arm. He flipped the blanket across the grass and began to set out the lunch that Portia had packed while the family was at church. “If your conversation continues to take this scintillating tack, however, I may be enveloped in the arms of Morpheus before lunch rather than after.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, stuff it.”

“I plan to, as soon as you join me on the blanket.” He smiled at her, squatting with an arm resting across one knee. “Camilla, I’m getting awfully hungry.”

She hesitated, then plopped to her knees in a billow of yellow gauze. “What’s in the basket?”

They feasted on fried chicken, biscuits with strawberry preserves and dewberry cobbler still warm from the oven. When every bone had been picked clean and every crumb rescued, Gabriel leaned against a tree trunk, hands clasped across his stomach. Camilla reclined on her elbows, feet tucked beneath her skirt.

She pulled a small feathered and beaded fan from her pocket. Gabriel looked ready to fall asleep, yet she knew he could be alert in an instant. “Why did you invite me out today?”

He opened one eye. “Wanted to see what you’ve been up to. Climbed out any windows lately?”

“No. But I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

“I’ve kept an eye on you, but I’ve been busy this week. Weddings, funerals, hospitals…Just pure wore me out.”

“Lady said you came to see Jamie.” Camilla couldn’t keep a trace of resentment from her voice. “You didn’t even say hello.”

“You were out running errands, I believe.” A faint smile curved his lips. “So you missed me?”

“Like I miss a toothache!” He laughed, and Camilla hitched a little closer to him. “Seriously, Gabriel, a lot has happened, and I needed to talk to you.”

Both eyes opened. “You send word to me day or night and I’ll come.” Though his lazy posture didn’t change, she knew she had his full attention. “You hear me?”

She nodded.

“Good. Now what is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about this boat thing.”

“The boat? You mean the torpedo boat? What do you know about it?”

“Not much. The night you and I met—you remember—”

“Believe me, that night is forever limned on my memory.”

“Well, as I was entering the house, I passed an open window, and heard my papa talking about a machine shop. That’s where the plans are. They called it a fish boat.”

Gabriel sat up, eyes on fire. “What else did you hear?”

“They said they’d already scuttled one prototype of the boat when the Yanks took New Orleans. They’re rebuilding it here, and—and they did mention one other name.” Camilla hesitated. The more she’d thought about it the less sense it made. Maybe she’d misunderstood. “The other man said somebody named Laniere was working on fixing a propeller problem.”

Gabriel stared at her. “My uncle Diron is involved somehow. I think he’s engineering the metal construction. I saw the plans on his worktable at the foundry a couple of weeks ago.”

Camilla picked up a napkin and began to pleat it. “You’ve got to spy on your uncle, and I have to spy on my papa.”

Gabriel pressed his lips together. Apparently he had some sort of conscience after all.

She sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Keep your mouth shut and your ears open.” He gave her a sharp look. “You haven’t said anything about this to anyone else, have you?”