Shadow of Dawn (25 page)

Catherine shook her head. “At night, we left
the room in darkness. He didn’t want me to see him.”

Something like a wave of anger went over
Andrew’s face, but he quickly controlled it. “Catherine, how could
you—” He stopped. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, putting
his hands over his eyes. “What made you believe him?”

She said nothing. She couldn’t even say she
was sorry, because she wasn’t sorry. Clayton was her husband.
Somehow Clayton had been mistaken about Andrew. Somehow this mess
would have to be cleared up. But she was Clayton’s wife, not
Andrew’s.

Not legally, said the rational part of her
mind. She swiftly squelched it.

Andrew took his hands away from his face and
eyed her searchingly. “You were in love with this man.”

Catherine remained silent.

“Don’t you realize?” Andrew said gently. “He
had to have been some sort of adventurer. Or…doesn’t Bart work for
the government? This man could have been a federal spy, hoping
somehow to gain access to information about the Confederacy.”

Catherine’s head jerked up as though he had
slapped her. “No!”

“But, what other explanation could there
possibly be?” He waited a moment. “Unless he was some poor man
smitten with you who devised a rather bizarre way to…have you.”

Her crimson face told him everything.

After a moment she ventured another glance at
him. He was staring at his hands, which rested on his knees, a hurt
and bewildered look on his face. She was stricken with pity for him
and impulsively reached out to touch his hand.

“Andrew, I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you. I didn’t
mean to. I believed he was you. But, under the circumstances, don’t
you think it would be best if we had our marriage annulled?”

“Because you’re in love with a man whose
identity you don’t even know? Or do you?”

Her gaze did not waver. “I told you I
don’t.”

He stood up. “I’m prepared to forgive you,
Catherine. I realize that I’ve been gone for a long time. You were
lonely…you believed what this charlatan told you. But I’m home now
and you are my wife.”

Catherine got to her feet, hardly aware that
she was moving.

“Of course I’ll be writing to my commanding
officer, telling him of my escape. I’ll be rejoining my unit
eventually. But until then—” He reached out and touched her cheek.
“We’ll have to get to know each other again. I’ll give you some
time. Please have the servants move my clothes into another
room.”

She stared at him. He leaned down and kissed
her cheek, then left the room, closing the door softly behind
him.

There could be no doubt that he was Andrew.
Everyone had recognized him immediately. But who had been shot for
desertion, if not Andrew? How could Clayton have made such a
mistake?

“My true wife, always and forever…”

Inexorably Andrew’s words, too, came back to
her. “Federal spy…hoping to gain information about the
Confederacy.” Clayton…wearing the uniforms of both armies—No! She
would not have doubts about Clayton. He could not have deceived her
so cruelly.

But he
had
deceived her—at least at
first.

Her thoughts ground relentlessly on. The
letter Bart had sent—what if it really had been intended for
General Lee and not General Burn-side? What if Clayton had
accomplished his mission when he took it away from her, reporting
its contents to Burnside? Had he really fought at Fredericksburg on
the side of the Confederacy? Or the Union?

If the Union, that would mean Dr. Edwards had
also deceived her, and that she could not believe. She’d seen the
old doctor battle for the lives of Confederate soldiers until he
could barely stand on his feet.

But what if he, too, were a Yankee spy?

No! her mind screamed. No!

She had married Andrew impetuously, but then,
as if learning nothing from that mistake, she had married Clayton
just as impetuously. Did she really know any more about him than
she had Andrew? All her supposed knowledge, all her opinions, had
been formed solely by things he had told her. And he had told her,
in no uncertain terms, that Andrew was dead.

Confusion reigned over her like a demonic
presence, settling in a cloud of darkness over her heart. But one
thought swirled round and round, and she clung to it as she would
to a raft caught in a raging flood. She loved Clayton, and she
believed that he loved her. That meant that he was who he said he
was, because he could not love her…and lie so convincingly.

***

She had fallen into a chair, and when she
rose, the clock was striking three o’clock in the morning. She felt
as though she had been on a long journey, down tortuous roads and
through dense jungles, with her feet dragging through quicksand and
branches snatching at her from the brush like hands of murderous
intent. She removed her clothes, put on her nightgown, and crawled
into bed.

At dawn she woke, still exhausted, her mind
running uncontrollably on. She must somehow let Clayton know about
Andrew’s return. She would tell Dr. Edwards, who would tell Mrs.
Shirley, and Mrs. Shirley would find Clayton, who would straighten
everything out. However, all this would take time—time that would
wear on Andrew’s patience.

Time was her enemy.

She washed and put on one of the old dresses
she wore to the hospital. She tiptoed downstairs, shivering, and
went into the kitchen. There was cornbread and cold ham from the
night before. She made herself eat, drank a glass of milk, and went
to the hall rack for her cloak.

The front door opened, startling her. She
twisted around to see Bart, barely visible in the dimness. An odor
of whiskey and cheap perfume permeated the air around him.

“Catherine,” he said, slurring her name so
that it came out “Cashrin.” He stood weaving back and forth in the
hallway. “Where are you going in the middle of the night?”

“It’s morning,” she said coldly.

He took the cloak out of her hands and
clumsily held it out for her. “Lemme help you.”

She didn’t think she could take it back from
him forcibly, so she turned and let him slip the cloak over her
shoulders. His hands lingered on her upper arms and slid down them
in a clumsy caress. She jerked away from him.

“Don’t be so standoffish!” He looked
offended. “You’ve got nothing to be shy about. We both know—”

“You’re drunk!”

“Shh!” He grinned at her. “Don’t want Sallie
to see me. Now com’ere—”

Catherine pushed him into the coat rack. His
coat sleeve hung on one of the hooks, and when he jerked it back
the entire rack toppled forward and crashed to the floor, with him
underneath it. She left him sprawled there, cursing and trying to
extricate himself.

Tad was in the barn sleepily putting out
fresh hay for the horses. He hitched the animals to the carriage
and drove her to the hospital with such a lack of dispatch that she
was nearly beside herself with exasperation by the time they
arrived. She went through the rear entrance and hurried to Dr.
Edwards’s office. He was not there, which didn’t really surprise
her at that hour of the morning.

At ten o’clock, he still had not arrived.
Catherine changed bandages, washed wounds and delirious faces,
carried instruments back and forth, and still he did not come.

None of the other doctors had seen him. None
of the orderlies had seen him, nor had any of the other nurses. At
last she caught one of the older doctors in his study.

“Dr. Taylor, do you know where I can find Dr.
Edwards?”

The old man peered at her abstractedly.
“Young woman, you are one of the nurses, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I’m Catherine…Kelly.”

“Dr. Edwards has gone home to Atlanta. His
grandson has been killed. He found he could get there just in time
for the funeral.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Catherine’s spirits sank.
“Do you know when he’s coming back?”

The white head wagged back and forth. “He may
not come back at all. He said he expected to stay there a while and
work in one of the Atlanta hospitals. Now I was looking up
something in my book, young woman, if you will excuse me.”

“I’m sorry. Thank you, Dr. Taylor.”

Catherine retreated into the corridor and
leaned against the wall. Now what was she to do? She had depended
on Dr. Edwards to contact Mrs. Shirley for her. Should she go in
search of the woman herself? Clayton had told her not to do
that.

Suddenly it seemed odd that Dr. Edwards
should disappear at the same time that Clayton and Mrs. Shirley
received new assignments. What if—but stubbornly she pushed the
thought back, exhausted by all the “what ifs” that assailed
her.

Give Clayton the benefit of the doubt, she
told herself. Give him time to come back and explain
everything.

If she had to, she could always go to Atlanta
and search for Dr. Edwards. She could always go to the Executive
Mansion and demand to see Mrs. Shirley. And if neither of them
could be found, then she would know.…

But as long as she could, she would wait.
Life was full of strange coincidences. It would take more than
circumstantial evidence to make her believe that Clayton had used
her, lied to her, and left her.

***

The wretched wife of the innocent man thus
doomed to die fell

under the sentence, as if she had been
mortally stricken.

The waiting proved to be interminable.
February had always been a slow month, in spite of its brevity in
length, but now it seemed to drag by like a corpulent slug. The
weather was extremely cold; she had to heat the water in her basin
every morning before she could wash her face. March arrived in a
gust of wind and a false promise of spring.

Andrew now read Dickens’s novel. He had taken
over for Sallie when she tired in the middle of a chapter, and it
was tacitly agreed that he should be the new narrator of the
household. He had a deep, well-modulated voice…it was one of the
things about him that had attracted her.

He had put on weight under the influence of
Hester’s excellent cooking. He was unfailingly polite and patient
with Catherine, not exerting any pressure to assume her wifely duty
to him. He went with her to church; he made it clear that any
mention of the black-hooded man who had claimed to be Andrew was
strictly off limits. His presence and his acceptance of Catherine
stilled the gossiping tongues and, as a matter

of fact, saved her reputation.

For that, Catherine was grateful. Still, she
knew in her heart that there would come a day of reckoning. Every
minute that ticked by on the noisy grandfather clock reminded her
of that. Why didn’t she hear from Clayton? Where was he, and was he
all right? What should she do?

It was a note addressed to Bart that spurred
her to action…a note she found by chance while helping Jessie clean
the formal parlor. Obviously it had fallen from his pocket as he
sat at the card table with his cronies. She had not been aware of
any recent meeting, so it must have taken place one day when she
was out of the house.

The little paper was folded, and on the
outside had been scrawled the name “Ingram.” She opened it to read
the words: “Four p.m. Ides Mar. The old house.” In the margin the
word “clay” had been scribbled.

Ides, she thought—Ides of March. Was Bart to
meet someone at four in the afternoon on March fifteenth? It was
then the twelfth. She had no idea which “old house,” however. Did
the word “clay” refer to an adobe house? She had never even seen
one.

Well, she would follow Bart. If there were a
meeting and she discovered any information that could help identify
Bart’s leader, she would have a perfect excuse to take the news to
the offices of the War Department. Perhaps then Clayton’s fellow
agents would contact him and let him know of Andrew’s return.

She knew that her plan was daring, even
dangerous—but she did not expect to encounter cold-blooded
murder.

“E
phraim, I need to
ask a favor of you.”

The old man’s face turned toward her
expectantly. He stood on a short ladder in the dining room,
cleaning the glass globes of the chandelier.

“Yes, Miss Catherine?”

“Can you come down from there for just a
moment?”

Ephraim carefully replaced one of the globes
and stepped off the ladder. Catherine gestured for him to join her
close against the wall and began to whisper.

“I need something, and I need you to get it
for me. I know it seems curious, but you’ll just have to trust
me.”

The servant looked mystified.

“I need some boy’s clothes—trousers and a
coat and a cap. And I want them right away. Here’s the money.” She
pressed some bills into his hand.

Ephraim eyed her dubiously. “Now Miss
Catherine, you know I trust you. Never in your life have I had
cause to scold you about anything, except a few times when you lost
your temper. But I just can’t see any good reason why you need to
put on some boy clothes.”