Redeeming Gabriel (9 page)

He showed her the contents of the canvas sack he’d set on the floor at the end of the bed. “I’d brought some myself. I was sure she was headed for amputation.” In reluctant wonder, Gabriel replaced the gauze strips around Lecy’s leg. Maybe Camilla’s prayers had done some good after all.

“Young man, you overstep your bounds.” The heavy voice was accompanied by angry footfalls.

Gabriel looked around, and Camilla straightened.

Dr. Kinch strode toward them, his white imperial beard jutting. He nodded at Camilla, then glared at Gabriel. “I would like to know on whose authority you endanger my patient’s health.”

Gabriel got to his feet, heat pumping from his gut to his extremities. “On the authority of God Almighty. Have you anything that outranks that?”

Fishlike, Dr. Kinch’s mouth opened and shut.

Hiding a smile, Camilla tucked the sheet back under the mattress. “I’m sure Reverend Leland meant no harm. We were marveling over how well Lecy has recovered.”

“Indeed.” The doctor puffed out his lips. “But you shouldn’t unwrap that bandage. Contaminated air has been known to carry mysterious miasmas into open wounds.”

Gabriel offered the doctor the antiseptic he’d brought. “I’ve heard military doctors are using this compound now to reduce such infections. I hope you’ll accept it as a token of my goodwill.” He forced a conciliatory tone. “I wouldn’t wish to do anything to slow down Lecy’s recovery.”

The doctor huffed as he accepted the sack and its contents. “I’m sure you have the best intentions, sir.”

Lecy caught Camilla’s hand. “You promised to bring my dolly a new dress.”

Dr. Kinch examined Gabriel’s neat bandaging, then excused himself to finish his rounds. With a smile Camilla produced a scrap of taffeta fashioned into a doll gown. She remained with Gabriel to carry on a cheerful conversation about the child’s numerous brothers and sisters.

They wandered through the wards, stopping here and there to read a letter, pray with sick and heartsore soldiers, and rejoice with those who were almost well enough to go home or return to the front lines. Camilla’s demeanor with the patients remained gentle and solicitous, but several times Gabriel caught her looking at him with a question in those clear topaz eyes.

Might as well face the music. He took her elbow and led her out onto a balcony overlooking Government Street, where the military review was winding down, clumps of butternut and gray troops dispersing toward the encampments at the edge of town. The fresh breeze off the bay blew Camilla’s dark skirt against its hoop and outlined her upper body in the red blouse.

Gabriel met the wry expression in her eyes and smiled to cover his discomfiture. “Do you come to the hospital every day?”

“Not unless there’s somebody in particular I need to see.”

He frowned a little. “Did you follow me here today?”

“I suppose you could say that.” Camilla leaned back against the balcony railing, an irritated glint in her eyes. “My grandmother wants to know if you’d like to help prepare some boxes for shipment out into the rural areas where food and supplies are needed.”

“Your grandmother apparently thinks I’m having trouble filling my time.” He grinned. “And you’d rather she found someone else to deliver her messages. Miss Camilla, you wound me.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t care less whether or not I like you.” She presented him with a clean, indifferent profile. “Shall I tell her you’ll come?”

“Where and when?”

“Tomorrow morning, at the M & O depot. There’s an empty car on a train heading north at noon. Papa says it’ll be the last one for the week.”

“I’ll be glad to help.”

“Good.” The amber eyes turned to him. “Reverend Leland—Gabriel, I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”

“What is it?” He moved as close to her as her great hooped skirt would allow.

She sighed and twisted a little pearl ring around her pinky finger. “My cousin Harry…please tell me if he’s well. Is he happy? Does he think of me?”

Gabriel wished for an insane moment that he were in Harry Martin’s shoes. To have a girl like Camilla Beaumont in love with him…

He shook his head. “I never answered your question about whether he wrote the sermon I gave you, but you must believe me when I say he did not.” He hardened his voice. “I haven’t seen him in a long time, and I don’t know where he is. Our political views don’t jibe.”

“I suppose they don’t.” She stared at him for a silent moment, her body gradually stiffening with disappointment and grief. “Would you explain to me how you justify bribing information out of a poor, innocent vagrant like Virgil?”

Delia was right. Compassion was getting him in trouble. Over the past few weeks, questions of his own had begun to interfere with his sleep. The possibility that he was being directed by some unseen hand was disturbing on a level he couldn’t begin to explain, even to himself. “First of all, that old man is about as innocent as a water moccasin. I didn’t bribe him—I simply bought him a good solid meal, and he mentioned that he knew you.” Camilla sniffed, but he didn’t care whether she believed him or not. “I found his bag in the hold of the boat, he recognized it, and I returned it.”

She regarded him shrewdly, but before she could question him further, a great caterwauling arose beneath the balcony, accompanied by a hideous and earsplitting braying. Gabriel and Camilla both leaned over the rail. Directly below, Virgil Byrd was struggling to restrain a very unhappy mule at the grand white granite entryway of the hospital. It was unclear whether they were trying to get in or out.

Gabriel put two fingers to his mouth and whistled.

The mule slumped and fell silent. Camilla looked at Gabriel wide-eyed, both hands over her ears. A hospital orderly shut the door from the inside.

Byrd grinned from ear to ear, his unkempt head thrown back. “Rev’rint Gabe! Missy! I knowed you was in there somewhere!”

Camilla burst into infectious giggles.

Gabriel glanced at her smiling. “Get that flea-bitten animal out to the street!” he shouted down at Byrd. “We’ll be right down.”

Gabriel and Camilla hurried down the stairs and back through the wards, then bid farewell to the harassed orderly guarding the front door against marauding enemies and recalcitrant mules. They crossed the yard and found Byrd sitting in the shade of a huge mossy oak by the street. Candy was hunkered beside him, munching placidly on a playbill from the theater down the street.

Camilla planted herself in front of Byrd, hoops swaying with the force of her sudden halt. “Virgil, you know you can’t bring Candy into the hospital!”

Byrd shuffled his feet. “She don’t like to get left behind. It hurts her feelings.”

“What if she decided to eat a chart or—or kick over a bedpan?” Camilla sighed at Byrd’s uncomprehending, hangdog expression.

“What’s your business, Byrd?” Gabriel asked impatiently.

The old man brightened, puffing out his chest. “Missy told me to find out about Mr. Jamie’s ship. The
Lady Camilla
’s in port, just like you said. But they ain’t lettin’ nobody off the ship, ’cause they’s all come down with the yeller fever.”

Camilla gasped.

Gabriel put a hand under her trembling elbow. “Byrd, where’s the ship?”

“Down to Fort Morgan. They say the whole crew’s bound to die, ’cause they ain’t no quinine in a hunnerd miles of here. Besides, ain’t nobody in their right mind gonna board a ship full of yeller fever.”

“But yellow fever’s spread by—” Gabriel stopped himself just in time. “So the ship’s cargo hasn’t even been unloaded?”

“Who cares about that?” Camilla frowned. “We can’t let those men die! I’m going to figure out some way to find some quinine. Virgil, go back to the waterfront and see what you can find out.” She pulled her elbow free of Gabriel’s hold. “My grandmother will expect you tomorrow morning at the M & O station. Good day, Reverend Leland.”

Gabriel watched Camilla hurry across the street as Byrd hauled the mule off in the direction of the waterfront. Too bad their momentary camaraderie had been disrupted. Now he’d have to start all over to gain her confidence. She had something he wanted. But if he could get hold of something she needed with equal passion, they might come to an agreement. Perhaps he could use her ignorance about the treatment of yellow fever to his advantage.

Whistling, he sauntered after Crazy Virgil the Birdman.

Chapter Seven

B
y the dim light of the moon, Camilla placed one dilapidated boot on her cedar chest to tie the laces. It had taken what was left of the afternoon to locate her slave-running costume, for Portia had stuffed it behind the washtub in the laundry room. She hoped she could get out of the house without waking Portia, or worse, Lady. Virgil had been unable to find quinine at the docks today, but she had to go to Jamie anyway. Perhaps there was something she could do for him. Laces tied, she opened the window casement and slid her leg across the sill.

And nearly knocked Gabriel Leland off the wisteria vine.

He choked out a surprised exclamation and grabbed her ankle. Fortunately, she had a good grip on the curtain.

“Let go!” she hissed.

“Pardon me if I decline,” he returned. “If you would be so kind as to haul us both back inside—”

“Hush! Do you want my grandmother to hear us?”

“Now that would be a fascinating turn of—”

Camilla gave a mighty shove of her boot that would have sent her gentleman caller tumbling, if he hadn’t had the agility of an orangutan. He dodged sideways, grabbed the windowsill, and pushed Camilla inside the room, where they fell, panting, side by side on the floor.

He pushed himself to his elbows and rolled slightly toward her. She found herself staring at his mouth, a strong, full mouth, with an oddly shaped little scar interrupting the curve of the upper lip.

He seemed to be listening for something, head to one side, his dark hair flung into half-closed eyes. “It’s all right.” He relaxed. Smiling, he plucked the cap off her head, and her hair sprang forth in Medusa-like abandon.

“All right?”
She struggled to her elbows. “If I scream, my papa will shoot you dead.”

“After he ships you off to a convent.”

He had a point. “What do you want?”

“My sermon.”

“You can’t possibly believe I think that’s a sermon.”

“I don’t care what you think. I’m proposing something you understand. A trade.”

“Ha! What would you have that would interest me?”

“Quinine.”

The word rumbled through her, sharpening her panic. She searched his deep-set eyes for mockery or braggadocio but found only matter-of-fact calm. And a glint of something else that might have been admiration.

“How’d you get it? Virgil says there isn’t any.”

“Let’s just say I have other connections.”

She scrambled to her feet and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I don’t know who you are, and I certainly don’t trust you.
Where
is the quinine?”

Gabriel sighed, rolling to his feet. “My uncle has it. He’s quite the accomplished smuggler, it turns out.”

Camilla lowered her hands, reluctantly meeting his gaze. “Your uncle? Then you have family here?”

“No one you’d know.” His mouth twisted.

Trembling, she considered her dilemma from every angle. She’d been praying for a way to help Jamie, but would God send her help in the form of this diabolical man?

He looked at her steadily. Clearly he was aware of her indecision, but he made no move to coerce her either physically or verbally. That fact somehow reassured her. “All right,” she said. “But before I give you the sermon we deliver the quinine to Jamie.”

“I might have known you’d insist on coming.” He sighed. “You are quite out of your mind, you know. What if your grandmother, whom you seem to regard with such fear and trembling, discovers you’re traipsing around in the middle of the night in those clothes?”

“I don’t care. I’m coming with you. I want to see Jamie for myself. This might be the last—” She swallowed. “Take me with you. Please.” Humiliating to beg. She held his gaze, breath hitching in spite of her efforts to steady it.

Suddenly he turned and pulled the curtain aside. “Come on, then. We’d best hurry.”

Camilla took two steps for every one of Gabriel’s as they hurried through the quiet, misty downtown streets. “Do you really believe what you preach?”

He expelled an impatient breath. “We don’t have time to discuss religion.”

“See?” She stumbled over a rut in the road. “I knew you were no minister!”

Steadying her with an arm around her waist, Gabriel chuckled. “Come to my church this Sunday if you want my opinions on God.”

She persisted. “What’s that sermon about? Why don’t you just write it again?”

“I threw away my notes.”

“But why—”

“You ask too many questions.” Gabriel jerked Camilla to a halt and lowered his voice. “Take my word for it, I’ve got to get it back tonight.”

“You owe me the truth, Gabriel Leland.”

“As you well know, the truth is a dangerous commodity in wartime.”

The grim set of Gabriel’s dark features and the implication of his words crystallized her suspicions. “You know, don’t you?” She felt as if she might faint. “You were sent down here to trap me and—and the rest of us!”

Music blared as someone opened the door of a nearby tavern. The light exposed a flare of triumph in Gabriel’s eyes. He stepped into the shadow of the building. “You might as well give me the details.”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

“Then maybe I should tell your papa you’re sending whiskey barrels up the rails behind his back. Bet he’d like to know his house slaves are selling liquor to the military.” His voice came out of the darkness, relentless. “He’ll likely choose Virgil Byrd as the scapegoat. What are you planning to do with the money? Your wardrobe getting outdated?”

Camilla raised a hand to slap the accusations out of his mouth, but he caught her wrist and had her snugged against him back to front before she could blink.

“I hate you, you—hypocrite!” She struggled against his strong arms, panting. “Whenever you don’t want to answer questions you go on the attack.”