Redeeming Gabriel (17 page)

But it seemed like an excellent excuse for her and Gabriel’s presence in Papa’s study.

What was Gabriel going to do about that ledger entry? He’d said he would go after the source of the money. He could hardly ruin Papa, as most of the family money was tied up in the railroad. As far as she knew, there was no cash lying around to steal.

She tapped her pen against the inkwell. Of course, there were ways to make sure a man’s source of income dried up. She knew of families convicted of treason, stripped of every asset and committed to prison. In some cases the head of the household had even been tried and hanged.

Papa’s loyalty to the Confederacy had been unquestioned since its inception. But Papa’s first cousin—Harry’s mother—had married Union. That left the entire Beaumont family open to suspicion. Camilla wondered sometimes if that wasn’t the reason for Papa’s zealous service to the Confederacy.

What would happen if authorities found out his daughter had been involved for four years in an underground railroad operation?

Bowing her head over her journal, Camilla prayed that Gabriel would honor his promise to keep her secret.

Feet dangling off the wharf at Uncle Diron’s place on the river, Gabriel blew a wailing riff on his harmonica. Yellow Jack’s domain was a dangerous place to be at sundown. Even if nobody else believed it, he knew that if a mosquito infected with yellow fever bit him, he could be dead inside a week.

But there was a certain peace that could only be found at the water’s edge, with the full magenta, carmine and indigo glory spread out like a flame in the distance. As a youngster he would pretend to fly off on a strip of cloud into that infinity of color. He even thought he could meet the Creator if he sat there long enough.

It never bothered him that he had no ma and pa. After all, he had Uncle Diron, who was better than a dozen parents put together. But he was aware of something odd about himself, something that made people look at him sharply. He knew he asked a lot of questions—Uncle Diron told him so. He had an insatiable desire to know everything. How did things work? Why were things put together as they were? What would happen if…?

Then he’d learned that if you asked too many questions and supposed too much, life itself would blow up in your face. The Creator apparently couldn’t care less about truth and those who pursued it. Gabriel made it his personal mission in life to answer his own questions, make his own truth, and to blazes with anyone who got in his way. Only since returning to Mobile and becoming acquainted with Camilla Beaumont had he begun to rethink his self-imposed spiritual exile.

The sun disappeared into the water. He slipped the harmonica into his pocket and took out a little brown bottle of tonic he’d found in his uncle’s shack. He’d hoped that coming back to Mobile would bring justification, if not revenge. So far, however, all he’d run into was more complication.

For one thing, there was no underwater boat under construction at the Skates Foundry. Just mundane items such as anchors and buttons and railroad spikes—the sort of things a man with business interests in ships and railroads would order.

So all that business with Camilla in her father’s study had led to nothing. Maybe she could still be useful, but he wished he hadn’t agreed to that crazy engagement. Her papa had yet to return from his business trip, and when he did…

Gabriel took another pull from the bottle and felt the burn all the way down to his gut. Nothing would wash away the nagging guilt he felt about what he planned to do to Ezekiel Beaumont. Had to be done, but Camilla would be sacrificed in the process.

She would be the means to the end.

He shouldn’t worry about her; in the past she had proved capable of protecting herself. He chuckled at the mental image of Camilla in boy’s clothes, trying to shove him out her window. She’d almost broken his neck.

Then he thought about the way she’d looked on the night of the ball, dressed like a princess and kissing him with startled abandon. He groaned. Nothing good came of courting good girls. It hadn’t taken her thirty minutes to start preaching at him.
God loves you,
she’d said with that unshakable certainty he found so hard to contradict.

Some part of him, maybe the little boy who loved sunsets, wanted to believe her. But the man who had been at Shiloh found it difficult.

He tossed the bottle into the water, heard it land with a solid plunk and watched it float off in the moonlight.

Chapter Thirteen

L
ate Tuesday evening, Camilla reluctantly followed Lady to the door of her father’s study. “Zeke, Camilla has something she wants to tell you.” Her grandmother paused for barely a moment before sailing in without an invitation.

“I still think we should wait until he’s had a chance to eat supper,” Camilla whispered as her father looked up from his paperwork with a frown.

“No point putting off a difficult task.” Lady seated herself in one of the two chairs facing the desk. When Camilla hovered beside her, she snapped her fingers. “Sit down, miss. You’ll give your father a crick in his neck.”

Papa glared as if the pain in his neck were seated across from him. “Whatever you two have up your sleeves can wait until morning. It’s nearly ten, and I can’t go to bed until I check this bill of lading.”

Lady merely chuckled. “Rough week, Ezekiel?”

Papa pushed up his spectacles to rub his eyes. “I’ve been traveling for eight days. I haven’t eaten since this morning, and I’m very busy.” His gaze rested on Camilla and softened somewhat. “What
is
it, Milla?”

She squirmed. “Something happened while you were gone. We had a ball…”

“For which I am very thankful.” He smiled. “That I was gone, I mean. I presume everyone had a good time?”

“Yes, sir, I mean, until we heard the Yanks were firing on Fort Morgan.”

Papa pressed his fingers against his temple. “Camilla, you didn’t come in here to tell me something that’s been in the papers for nigh on a week.”

“No, sir, but you asked—”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Lady banged her cane against the floor. “Quit pussyfooting around and tell your papa—”

“Tell me
what?
” Ezekiel barked.

“That I’m betrothed,” blurted Camilla.

Ezekiel dropped the pen in his hand, splattering ink everywhere. “To who?”

“To Reverend Leland.” Camilla looked down at her fingers twisting in her lap. “It was Lady’s idea.”

“How could your engagement be your grandmother’s idea?”

Lady bristled. “Somebody had to take charge—with you gallivanting all over Alabama, the house full of company, and your daughter in a locked room kissing the preacher!”

Papa’s face purpled as he turned on Lady. “I had assumed that by this time you would have taught the girl some deportment.”

“Now just a minute, Ezekiel Beaumont—”

“Lady! Papa!” Camilla kept her voice soft but gave it an edge that caused both her father and her grandmother to halt their angry words. She rose with as much dignity as she could muster, hands laced in front of her, and took a deep breath. “I’m not a baby or a toy for the two of you to argue over anymore.
If
I choose to enter into a betrothal with Reverend Leland, it’s nobody’s business but mine and his. Of course I’ll listen to your counsel, but in the end—” She shrugged with eloquent simplicity. “It’s my decision. Papa, I apologize for interrupting your work. We can talk more in the morning.”

Ezekiel stared at his daughter, speechless, as she kissed his cheek. Much subdued, Lady offered her cheek as well.

“Good night, Papa. Good night, Lady.”

As she walked to the door, Camilla heard her grandmother say smugly, “
That,
Ezekiel, is a lady.”

Camilla spent the next two days trying to figure out a way to change the shape of her two day dresses. Her rather embarrassing growth spurts in certain areas had made it in the nature of an emergency. Eventually she realized she was going to have to swallow her pride and ask Papa for money for a new one.

She stood outside the study door, hand raised to knock.

The problem was, after her grandiose speech the other night, she hadn’t had the courage to broach the subject of her engagement with him. Besides, he was rarely at home. She’d had a note from Gabriel yesterday, saying he’d requested an appointment with her father, but she’d heard nothing from either of them after that. It would be just like two men to arrange her life without consulting her.

She refused to let that happen. She rapped on the door.

“Who’s there?” Papa’s voice was impatient.

“It’s me, Papa.”

Camilla waited for a moment, then the door opened.

“What is it?” Over Papa’s shoulder she saw Fanny’s father seated across the room in front of the desk. Mr. Chambliss had been here a lot the past couple of days. The men weren’t close friends, but they had occasional business dealings. The fish boat, for example.

“Papa, it’s time we talked,” she said steadily. “I see you have company now, but you’re never alone anymore, and it’s—important.”

Her father sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Now’s not a good time. I’ll come find you before I go out for the afternoon.” He started to shut the door, but Camilla put out a hand to stop him.

“Please, Papa, I—I’m fixin’ to go out, myself. That is, I need to buy fabric for a new dress, and I need some money.”

He reddened and glanced around to make sure Mr. Chambliss couldn’t hear. “Sweetheart, I just gave the last of my cash to your brother.” He cleared his throat. “You look grand, anyway. Why, that dress looks practically new.” He chucked her under the chin. “Run along, now.”

The door shut in Camilla’s face.

Her throat clogged with tears.

Later that afternoon, wearing the dress that her father had admired—which had been made three years earlier for her straight-line fifteen-year-old body—Camilla slipped out the front door carrying an empty burlap flour sack. If there was no money for a dress, then there was no money for a dress. She’d have to occupy herself otherwise and pray she wouldn’t burst any buttons. She wasn’t going to sit home and wait for Gabriel to come calling.

She looked around as a familiar whistling whine hailed her from the street. Virgil Byrd trotted toward her in a small dogcart pulled by his mule. “Missy!” One skinny arm flailed above his head. “Wait for me!”

“Virgil! How have you been?”

“Slicker’n a bucket full of oysters!” He drew the cart up beside her. “Where you going? I’d be mighty happy to give you a ride.”

The cart looked none too clean and smelled of sour mash. It was half full of rolled-up newspapers. “Where’d you get the wagon?”

“Mr. Hastings at the newspaper office give it to me for my route.” Virgil beamed.

Camilla gathered her skirts and hoisted herself onto the narrow plank seat. “This is a pleasant surprise. I was headed to the docks. Can you drop me at the St. Anthony Street Warehouse?”

Virgil gave her one of his astonishingly shrewd looks. “Yore papa’d skin me if I’s to let you off there by yoreself. No, sir. I better take you to the hospital or the church instead.”

Camilla did her best to hide her exasperated amusement. “I want to scavenge the warehouses for rope.”

“You can’t go in them warehouses. You want a rope, I can find you a rope.”

Camilla held on as they bumped across a rut in the road. “I don’t want
a
rope. I want to fill this sack up with leftover rope pieces, so we can card it to make surgical gauze.” When he looked uncomprehending, Camilla said firmly, “My papa said I could go. To the warehouses.”

“All right, but don’t blame me if you get in big trouble.” Virgil drove in injured silence for perhaps a minute before he gave her a sidelong look. “You ain’t borried my bag in a long time. I didn’t never think that was right—you runnin’ around in the middle of the night in them boy’s clothes.”

“You never told anybody, did you?”

“What you take me for? You said don’t tell nobody, so I didn’t tell nobody.”

“Good.”

“’Cept Revrint Gabe.”

Camilla jerked on the reins, halting the cart in the middle of the street. “So that’s how he knew! Virgil, I’ll never trust you again.”

He blinked at her in innocent alarm. “Revrint Gabe’s yore friend. He said he was, and he told me thangs he wouldn’t never of knowed if he wasn’t.” He gave her a hangdog look from under those preposterous eyebrows.

“You still shouldn’t have told him anything.”

Virgil looked repentant. “If I tolt
you
a secret, would you fergive me?”

She sighed. “All right, what is it?”

“The other night me and Candy was walkin’ down Church Street, lookin’ in the garbage piles for some-thin’ to eat.” Virgil looked around. “We got to the old Bethel Church—the one the ’Piscopals left empty when they moved to their new building—and dang if it wasn’t empty.”

“You mean it
was
empty?”

“Naw! It
wasn’t
empty! There was this big metal thing in there and a couple fellas bangin’ on it and climbin’ in it. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it in my life!”

“How big? What did it look like?”

“Big as a fishin’ boat. But it looked kinda like a boiler.”

Camilla covered her mouth and stared at Virgil. He’d found the fish boat!

But before she could respond, she spied Fanny Chambliss walking down the street with her beau, Wendell Nelson. Fanny turned to look in the window of the corner jeweler’s store, but Wendell saw Camilla and waved. A short argument ensued, then Wendell shook off Fanny’s hand on his arm and crossed the street.

After a moment of indecision, Fanny hurried after him. By the time she reached the dogcart, Camilla had introduced Wendell to Virgil.

Virgil pumped Wendell’s dubiously offered hand. “I’m mighty pleased to meet you. Any friend of Missy’s is a friend of mine.”

“Camilla, what are you doing?” With unerring skill Fanny brought attention back to herself. “You can’t stop in the middle of the street like this.”

Wendell looked around. “Indeed, we’re blocking traffic. Miss Beaumont, may I offer you my escort?”