Redeeming Gabriel (16 page)

“Camilla! Are you in there?”

Jamie’s voice. Camilla felt her stomach flip. “Oh, heavens!” she whispered. She pushed against Gabriel’s arms, nearly sending them both off the ladder. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“There’s no time to go through the window. Come here!” He jumped lightly off the ladder, then reached up to catch Camilla by the waist and swing her to the floor. Just as the door swung inward, Gabriel swooped.

Camilla found herself lifted off the floor and most thoroughly kissed.

Chapter Twelve

G
abriel felt Camilla jerk, struggle as the study door opened, spilling full light into the room.

“Leland!” barked Jamie Beaumont. “Release my sister!”

Just as he let Camilla go, Jamie grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

Beaumont looked as if he didn’t know who to light into first. “Camilla, have you lost your mind? Are you all right?”

“You’re wasting sympathy on the wrong party.” Gabriel pressed the back of his hand to his bleeding lower lip.

Camilla brushed at a spot of blood on her bodice. “If you’ve ruined my best dress I’ll never speak to you again!”

“I am certain, Jamie dear, that what we have just witnessed was a betrothal kiss.”

Gabriel’s head whipped around. All amusement fled.

Delythia St. Clair stumped into the room, wagging an arthritic finger at Jamie. “Exceedingly bad manners, my boy, to draw pistols on one’s prospective brother-in-law.”

Gabriel sat squirming on the edge of the red leather chair, facing Jamie Beaumont’s basilisk glare and Mrs. St. Clair’s triumphant gleam. What had seemed like an excellent idea at the time now seemed to be the height of idiocy. Surely they were not going to insist on an engagement just because he had kissed the little hoyden.

He glanced at Camilla, seated on a horsehair sofa under the window. She stared at her lap, touching a finger to her red lips. No help there.

“Did Camilla agree to marry you?” Jamie paced in front of the fireplace. “When my father returns, he’ll have something to say about that.”

Ezekiel Beaumont would never throw his only daughter away on a penniless circuit-riding preacher. Gabriel contrived to look upset. “Surely he’ll allow Camilla to marry where her heart is engaged—”

“And my heart is very much engaged elsewhere.” Camilla jumped to her feet. “Lady, you know I’m going to marry Harry!”

“Sit down, miss!” Mrs. St. Clair thumped her cane so hard the lamps shook. “Reverend Leland is clearly under the impression that you have accepted his suit. Considering the outrageous behavior your brother and I witnessed, your options have narrowed to one—you will consider yourself betrothed, or your reputation will be in tatters.”

Camilla stuck her chin in the air. “Lady, you are so old-fashioned! Besides, nobody saw but you and Jamie.”

Mrs. St. Clair’s tone was perfectly enunciated. “No gentlewoman allows herself to be intimately embraced outside of marriage, as you very well know.”

Camilla frowned. “Why aren’t you shouting at
him?
”

Gabriel hid his amusement. “Miss Beaumont, the nearness of your beauty overcame my good sense. As a man of God and a gentleman of honor, I am fully prepared to offer you the protection of my name.”

“You are quite forgiven, but I would prefer that we pretend it never happened.”

Jamie wheeled and halted. “Excellent notion.”

“Certainly not.” Mrs. St. Clair tapped her fan against her palm.

Gabriel hesitated. If he insisted on a betrothal, he stood in danger of being shackled for life. On the other hand, he would have almost unlimited access to Confederate high command, as well as the chance to dismantle the underwater boat project.

He would just have to make sure the tie was temporary.

“I refuse to abandon my obligation to duty.” Ignoring Camilla’s pleading look, Gabriel rose and bowed to Mrs. St. Clair. “Would you allow your granddaughter and me a moment alone to seal our commitment?”

“In a pig’s eye!” Jamie burst out.

But his grandmother nodded with grave dignity. “Certainly, Reverend. James, you will escort me back to the ballroom. And I will expect to see the two of you back there in five minutes or less.”

Gabriel bowed again as Jamie reluctantly accompanied his grandmother from the room, leaving the door open a discreet inch.

“This is a fine disaster!” Camilla said through her teeth.

Gabriel bumped the door shut. “It could be worse. If your brother had caught us going through those ledgers—”

“Yes, but did you have to—” She pressed her lips together and looked away.

“I was beginning to think you a free-thinking young woman,” he chided.

Tears swam in her eyes. “You’re the most heartless person I’ve ever met. You don’t care about my family, and you certainly don’t care about me. You don’t have any morals of your own, so you make fun of those who do, and—and—you use that false title ‘man of God’ to cover your trickery and cynicism!”

Everything she said was true, but he wasn’t going to feel guilty about doing his job and enjoying a stolen kiss.

She blinked away her tears. “I think you’re afraid of real faith.”

He smiled to cover his discomfort. “I’m not afraid of anything, though the charge of cynicism is perhaps true. I doubt God is much interested in our mission.”

“God is interested in
everything
we do. I trust Him to take care of me.” Camilla stared at Gabriel with calm assurance. “What’s more, I believe He loves you enough to send you to Mobile, Alabama, to reveal Himself to you.”

Something pierced his armor of doubt. What if she was right? “No skin off my nose if you want to believe that.” He moved toward the desk, putting space between himself and Camilla. “I’m sorry if you’re not happy with our engagement, but I think it’ll serve our purpose very well.”

“There have got to be less…personal ways for me to help you.”

“Why, Miss Beaumont, one would almost think you are afraid of me.” The accusation hung in silence for a moment or two before Gabriel shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I want unlimited access to your father and his military houseguests, so we’re going through with it.” He allowed a delicate pause to underscore his determination. “Otherwise I might be tempted to indulge in a bit of…bragging.”

“You are despicable,” Camilla said between her teeth. “I’ll go along with it, but I promise you my papa won’t like it.”

Gabriel laughed. “I’m counting on that.”

“Milla! Miss Milla!”

Camilla struggled out of a dream in which she walked down an aisle, dressed in a wedding gown so enormously belled that it brushed the ends of the pews on either side. The groom’s face was obscured by her lacy veil and by the fact that her spectacles were perched on top of her head rather than on her nose. But when she reached his side, Papa lifted her veil to reveal that it wasn’t Harry at all but Gabriel Laniere, regarding her with an I-told-you-so smirk.

Harry stood before them with a prayer book open in his hands. “Dearly beloved…”

“Miss Milla, roust out of there and get your clothes on! Your grandmama’s upset.”

Camilla squinted at Portia, who had jerked aside the mosquito netting as well as the window draperies. Sunshine poured across the carpet, setting dust motes into flight. “What time is it?”

“It’s ’most nine o’clock. She had breakfast a long time ago, and she can’t understand why everybody don’t get up with the chickens.” Portia opened the armoire and sorted through Camilla’s pitiful array of gowns, shaking her head. “Girl-child, you done outgrown half of what’s in here.”

Camilla struggled to her elbows and yawned. “I’ll let one of them out this afternoon.”

“Looks to me like all the let’s done out.” Portia examined the seams of the dress she had selected. “Never mind. Just hurry, before Lady has an apoplexy.”

Camilla rolled out of bed and started to wash. “It was nearly two in the morning before the last of the soldiers left.” She rinsed her mouth and spat. “My feet hurt.”

“I hear you was quite the belle of the ball.” Portia helped Camilla into camisole, chemise, corset, hoops, petticoat and finally the too-small dress. She worked in tight-lipped silence.

Camilla sighed. “What’s the matter, Portia?”

“Nothing,” Portia said, then burst out, “I suppose you think it’s not important to tell me you done got engaged to that foreign preacherman.” She found several snarls in Camilla’s curls that needed her vigorous attention.

“Oh.” In the mirror Camilla studied the neat plaits that bound Portia’s beautiful head. “You heard about that.”

“Is there anything happen around here I don’t hear about?”

“I suppose not.” She regretted Portia’s anxiety. “Portia, he’s not foreign.”

Portia snorted. “Don’t know what lies he’s fed you, but that boy don’t come from nowhere, if you ask me. Too good-lookin’, too smooth, too much of everything! You mark my words. That’s one load of trouble you’re takin’ on.”

Camilla met Portia’s wise dark eyes in the mirror, wondering if she dared invest Gabriel’s secret in her mentor. Something restrained her. She shrugged. “Can’t go back now.”

Portia sighed, gave Camilla a brief hug and shooed her out of the room. “Go see what your grandmama wants.”

Camilla found Lady in her sitting room poring over a stack of fashion magazines.

“Where are your spectacles?” Lady demanded as Camilla entered the room.

“In my pocket—”

“Put them on and come look here. I think this train of Mechlin lace would look exquisite over—”

“Lady, what are you doing?”

Lady paused with fingers marking several pages in the top book. “We’re going to plan your trousseau, of course.” She smiled. “I remember when Thomas asked for my hand, I couldn’t wait. Camilla, what is it?” She pushed the magazines off her gout stool so that Camilla could sit before her. “If you’re worried about your father, I can bring him around.”

“It’s not that.” Camilla sighed. “Well, maybe it is, a little. But it’s mostly Harry. I promised him…”

“Dear one, we all make promises when we’re young, and time can alter the conditions of those promises.” Shaking her head, Lady took Camilla’s hands. “It’s time to face the reality that Harry might not even make it through the war alive—”

“Stop it!” Camilla tried to pull her hands away. “Don’t say that!”

“Camilla, look at me. Mobile seems to be a safe place, but there’s no guarantee of protection.” Lady’s voice was harsh. “It has come to me lately that you’re a woman grown. Having known the blessing of a Christian husband, I want the same for you.”

“I don’t know what you’re afraid of, Lady, but Papa and Jamie will take care of us—” Camilla stopped when Lady pressed her fingers to her eyes. “What
is
it? What do you think is going to happen?”

After a moment her grandmother’s hands fell to her lap. “Something just tells me to be on guard.” Lady closed her eyes.

Camilla was more frightened by the resignation she had glimpsed there than by any of the events of the past month. Then a rumble of thunder shook the house, and she realized that the morning’s sunshine had been overtaken by one of the sudden squalls that came off the gulf. Shadows slid into the room.

Camilla felt her way through confusion. “Do you truly want me wed to one man when I’m promised to another? Surely that can’t be God’s will.”

“Your commitment to Harry is commendable, my dear.” Lady’s eyes opened, shrewd and bright. “But if your attachment to him were as deep as you say, that scene last night would never have taken place.”

Camilla blushed, unable to defend herself.

“Reverend Leland is a very attractive man.”

“I suppose he is.”

“I’m curious. Whose idea was it to find an empty room in which to converse? Yours or his?”

“I don’t remember!” Camilla grabbed a copy of
Godey’s Lady’s Book
and randomly flipped it open. “Portia says I’m going to split a seam if I don’t do something about my dresses. What do you think about this new style?”

The rain came behind the thunder, falling as if God upended an enormous heavenly mop bucket. That afternoon Camilla sat in the front parlor with her feet drawn up and a small lap desk across her knees. She looked up when Schuyler slopped through the front door, bringing with him mud, wet leaves, and a steamy, swampy odor. Shaking his damp head like a gangly sheepdog, he slung water all over Portia’s spotless oak floor, creating a soupy, sandy mess under his dirty boots.

Camilla scowled as the ink ran on her journal page.

“Where’s the general?” Schuyler dropped his oilskin slicker right where he shrugged it off and snagged an orange from the basket at Camilla’s elbow. He headed toward the stairs.

“Lady’s in her—”

“Not
that
general!” Schuyler grinned over his shoulder. “General Forney!”

Camilla slammed the journal shut and set the desk aside. “Why?”

“Jamie sent me. Word’s come up from the gulf that the Yankees have backed off from Fort Morgan. Can’t handle our choppy seas.”

“Praise God!” Camilla sat back in relief. “General Forney is working in his room, I believe.” As Schuyler pounded up the stairs, she went back to her journal.
The storm seems to be a blessing after all….

The parlor was quiet for a long time, the silence broken only by the scratch of her pen, the occasional crack of thunder and the hiss and spatter of rain against the window. She found herself staring into space, chin in hand, pen waggling. There had to be some way to contact Harry.

Something happened night before last….

She scratched out the words. Too private to put on paper. Jamie and Lady had both seen it, but no one could see her feelings. No one but God.

What did He think about her unladylike behavior?

True, Gabriel had started it, but she’d been in no hurry to end it. She’d been no better than that actress, Delia Matthews, Gabriel’s partner.

Camilla was Gabriel’s partner now, too. A rush of unbidden pleasure filled her. To share a secret with a man was, she suspected, the beginning of the sort of relationship enjoyed by husbands and wives. Kissing him had only increased that intimacy.