The Velvet Shadow (50 page)

Roger cleared his throat. “But now that I’ve ruined things for all of us—”

“Maybe things aren’t so bad.” Flanna spoke with a conviction she didn’t feel. “But we won’t know anything until the morning. So get some sleep, Roger, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

He nodded slowly, then pointed to the chair. “Would you like
to sit?”

“No. I never could sleep in a chair, not even in medical school.” Flanna stretched out on the cold floor and rested her head on one arm. Streams of dust rose to tickle her nose, and sand gritted against her skin, but she was content. Alden was safe, and he slept only a few feet away.

“Flanna?” Roger’s disembodied voice floated toward her in the darkness.

“What, Roger?”

“We are friends, aren’t we?”

She smiled, amazed at his persistence. He was the perfect politician because he never gave up, never acknowledged defeat.

“Yes, Roger,” she called, her voice husky with exhaustion. “We’re friends.”

“Some marriages”—he paused a moment—“some very
good
marriages are established on friendship, Flanna.”

Flanna closed her eyes and sighed in exasperation. Like a child who has been denied a privilege he thought he had earned, he needed to know he would have something to call his own.

But he would never have her. Alden had given her heart wings, and she could never settle down in a loveless marriage. She would die alone and a spinster before she would marry a man she did not love.

“Go to sleep, Roger.” Her voice echoed in the room’s emptiness. “I expect that we will need our strength for tomorrow.”

He did not answer, but the chair creaked as he settled into it. Flanna rested her cheek on her clasped hands and willed herself to sleep.

Through a haze of exhaustion and pain, Alden heard two voices buzzing around him. Something in his brain urged him to wakefulness, and his eyes opened to complete darkness as Roger assured Flanna that friendship would prove a good foundation for marriage.

Of course it would. Flanna was too accomplished, and Roger far too persuasive for them to be anything but happy together.

Alden let his heavy eyelids fall. The dreams he allowed himself
were an exercise in futility, and he would do himself a favor if he put them aside altogether. He had no business even thinking about his brother’s sweetheart.

Flanna woke the next morning to the sound of argument. Both brothers were awake and sitting up; both blazed with fury as they faced each other.

“You still haven’t explained why you were absent without leave,” Alden was saying, his face bright with anger. “If I were your commanding officer—”

“But you’re not,” Roger snapped. “And I’ve been trying to tell you, but you won’t listen. You were gone, Flanna was gone, and I figured you were gone together. But none of that is important now—we’ve got to decide how to help Flanna now.”

“She should tell the truth,” Alden said. “No one would blame her for trying to come home.”

“But she aided the enemy, and they’ll consider her a spy,” Roger countered. “Do you want her executed or thrown into prison?”

“She’s not a spy.” Though stained with fatigue, Alden’s face glowed as though lighted from within. “You must give away information to be a spy. She’s given no information to anybody.”

“She impersonated a Confederate army surgeon!” Roger’s eyes were flat and dark in the dim light, unreadable, but there was no mistaking the passion in his voice. “They will not appreciate that! And they will be incensed to learn that she brought you, a Yankee officer, to a Confederate hospital for treatment.”

“Stop, stop!” Flanna held up her hand, then wearily ran her fingers through her sleep-tousled hair. “Both of you must be quiet. There is nothing to debate. This Confederate colonel will decide whatever he wants to decide, and that is all there is to it.”

“You could lie.” Roger tilted his brow and looked at her uncertainly. “Tell him you were held captive by the Union army. Tell him you were caught behind the lines when the army came ashore on the peninsula, and when you saw Alden wounded you thought he was a
Confederate. Tell them you were confused, that you’re only a woman, that you had no idea what was going on—”

“I’ll say no such thing.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I won’t lie.”

“It’s not a lie; it’s an elaboration. Politicians do it all the time—”

“Heaven spare me from politicians then.” She closed her eyes, wondering if he would ever understand. “Roger, I am a woman, but I can think, I can reason, and I know very well what is going on. And what I did will be wrong in their eyes, but it was right in God’s. I just used the gifts he has given me.”

“So you’re bringing God into the discussion?” Alden looked at her with a smile glowing in his eyes.

“Yes.” Flanna’s voice was firm and final. “For God Almighty is neither Confederate nor Federal. He is truth, and he is right, and he knows that my heart is innocent.”

“Well then.” Alden leaned peacefully against the wall, a beatific smile creasing his tanned face. “Let us hope the officer who hears our case has consulted the Almighty on our behalf.”

Colonel James L. Kemper, of the First Virginia regiment, sat in a chair at the front of the courtroom, flanked by several other officers in brushed gray coats with gleaming brass buttons. General Robert E. Lee had just been appointed commander of the army at Richmond, an aide explained as he ushered Flanna, Roger, and Alden into the oak-paneled chamber, and Major General James Longstreet commanded the right wing. But neither man could be spared for a military trial, so Colonel Kemper had been tapped to hear this case.

The accused did not have to wait long for the proceedings to get under way. Once Flanna and the brothers had been seated in a row of wooden chairs before the tribunal, one of the colonel’s aides stood and read the indictment. “Charge—that this woman, Flanna O’Connor, with premeditation, did willfully impersonate a doctor of the Confederate army with the avowed purpose of giving aid and
comfort to the enemy.”

Flanna risked a glance at the colonel. He sat absolutely still, his eyes as hard as dried peas and his mouth drawn up into a disapproving knot.

“These two men, sir,” the aide lowered the list of formal charges as he pointed to Roger and Alden, “are officers in the Union army. We will file no charges against them. The wounded officer was brought here by the machinations of this woman, and the other freely surrendered himself to our pickets.”

“A deserter?” the colonel asked.

“Yes,” the aide answered, and Flanna saw Roger flush at the word.

“Your honor, I object to these military proceedings.” Roger stood and inclined his head in a gesture of respect. “This woman obviously has no place in either army. Since she is a civilian, she is beyond this court’s jurisdiction. You have no authority over her.”

The colonel pressed his hands together and leaned forward, his dark eyes sinking into nets of wrinkles as he smiled. “Thank you for attempting to educate me. I have eyes—I can see that this is a woman. But she has been tampering with the army, sir, and under very serious circumstances. So I find I must deal with her.”

Those dark and wary eyes now turned to Flanna and studied her above a strained smile. “Miss O’Connor, did you bring this Yankee officer into one of our hospitals for treatment?”

“Yes sir.” She tried to maintain her curt tone. “He was very badly wounded, and I knew there were no Union hospitals behind the lines. He would have died if I had not brought him to Richmond.”

“Surely the Union army has regimental surgeons.”

“Yes, but the surgeon for Major Haynes’s regiment is inept.”

The colonel’s feathery brows shot up to his hairline. “And how would you know anything about this Yankee surgeon?”

“I know because…” She glanced at Alden, and the warmth in his eyes gave her courage. “I know because I am a degreed physician, sir. And I have been traveling with the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts since last summer.”

A light twittering sound broke out among the observers at the
back of the room, and Flanna blushed when she realized what they had inferred.

“I am not a camp follower,” she proclaimed, imposing an iron control on herself. “I would not have you thinking that my virtue was compromised in any way.” She lifted her chin and straightened into a militant posture. “I wore a soldier’s clothes, sir, and enlisted as Franklin O’Connor.”

Astonishment blossomed on the colonel’s face, then he snorted in derision. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Believe what you like.” Pride kept her from arguing. “But while I traveled with the army, I observed several regimental surgeons at work—many of them are butchers, including the surgeon attached to the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts. Major Haynes would have died in the Union camp if he had been fortunate enough to receive any care at all.”

The colonel lifted an eyebrow in amused contempt. “Then why, Dr. O’Connor,” he said, faintly underlining the title with scorn, “did you choose to bring this particular Yankee officer to Richmond when there were scores of other men who needed treatment?”

Caught off guard by the question, Flanna blanched. Why bring Alden? She wanted to shout, “Because he means everything to me,” but she couldn’t give that answer. The judge wouldn’t understand, Alden would be mortified by her confession of a love he couldn’t return, and poor Roger would be further humiliated.

“Why did I bring Major Haynes?” Her stomach knotted under the colonel’s withering glare.

“That was my question, young woman.”

Flanna gripped her hands and decided to revert to Southern tactics. She was a lady, schooled in all the strategies of feminine charm. Perhaps this gentleman colonel could be convinced to grant her a moment’s grace.

She deepened her voice and her accent. “I must confess that I hesitate to tell you, sir, since it involves a personal matter.” She looked up, hoping to disarm him with a pair of fluttering lashes and her prettiest
smile—

He wasn’t buying it. Her flirtation rippled over him like water over a rock; his granite expression remained unchanged. “Speak up, young lady!”

So much for Southern charm. Flanna wiped the smile from her face, quietly relieved that Aunt Marsali’s lessons meant nothing here.

“Well—” She glanced at Roger. “I know you may not approve, but I acted to save Alden Haynes because for some time I have thought of him as my future brother-in-law. Roger and I had an understanding before the war began.”

The colonel’s eyes widened into glittering ovals of repudiation. “You, Miss O’Connor, have already gone to the devil. You may as well go to the Yankees too!” He flushed in fury and slammed his hand on the armrest of his chair. “We shall waste no more time with this.” He motioned toward his aide. “The proper judgment is clear. Flanna O’Connor, you are remanded into the care of Mrs. Ellen Corey and placed under house arrest. If you’re a doctor, you ought to make a good nurse. You will work in Mrs. Corey’s house as a nurse until the business of war is finished.”

The colonel’s mouth pulled into a sour grin as he looked at Roger and Alden. “The two Yankee officers are sentenced to Libby Prison until the war is over.”