Traces of Mercy (27 page)

Rand arrived at the cottage by midafternoon and handed Isaac the reins of his horse. “He needs water. I don’t plan to be long.”

The minute he stepped through the door, Rand could smell the perfume he’d given Mercy a few weeks before. It lingered in the air, hung like a mist in the room. He fought to get her image out of his mind as he went straight to the gun cabinet in the study. He knew the inventory of guns well, as he had always been the one responsible for their care. From the time he was old enough to know how to shoot, his grandfather had instilled in him the need for proper maintenance of firearms. Twice a year the rifles were broken down and cleaned, stocks oiled, barrels polished. It took only seconds for his trained eye to see that three of the rifles had been moved: a Springfield, a Colt, and a Henry repeating rifle. One by one he lifted them out of the case and examined them. The Springfield was the last rifle he picked up. He braced the stock against the floor and sniffed at the barrel. There was a definite odor of sulfur that made his gut wrench. He dipped a finger into the end of the rifle and scraped it around the steel, pulling it out to see the black powder residue that was a telltale sign someone had used the rifle but hadn’t cleaned it. It didn’t prove anything, he reminded himself. Ezra could have used the rifle—maybe even Isaac—though either case would be a violation of the law. He tipped the gun the other way and inspected the stock. There was a small dent on the butt plate—and something else. Rand leaned closer and squinted at the dark substance that was dotted across the grain of the wood. It looked like blood. He thought back to the moments alone with Mercy when they’d made their plan to run away. His hand on her shoulder and her involuntary wince at his touch. She had hurt herself. Bled enough to spatter the rifle. Could it be true?

Letty appeared in the doorway of the study. “Mr. Rand? Kin I have Kizzy fix you somethin’ to eat?”

He ignored the question—held the rifle by the barrel and looked at her. “Have you ever seen Miss Mercy handling any of these rifles, Letty?”

“No, suh,” she said, shaking her head.

“Do you know where she was the night before she left for good?” he demanded.

“She tol’ me she had herself a powerful head pain and went to bed early,” Letty said. “I even tucked her in with a hot brick for her feet.”

“And she was in her bed all night?”

Letty fixed big brown eyes on Rand. “I can’t rightly say that or not since I be sleeping in my quarters.”

“But you didn’t hear anything unusual?”

A shake of her head, then a small shrug. “Not till I heard her bawling around dawn.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked impatiently.

“She be crying behind her door when I come in that morning,” Letty said. “When I ask if she be okay, she say she be having a bad dream.”

Rand propped the rifle against the wall of the study and brushed past Letty. “Get Ezra in here. Isaac, too.”

Mercy’s wedding dress was still hanging in front of the cheval glass in the corner of the bedroom, and it served as a punch in his gut when he saw it. The four-poster bed was neatly made; Mercy’s things still sat on top of the bureau. His eyes swept over the memories scattered there: a playbill from the first time he took her to the theater, a yellow ribbon tied around a bouquet of dried pink roses, the long feather he had given her after the pheasant hunt. He picked up the feather and thought back to the day of the hunt and the astonishing natural ability she had with the rifle. Only it wasn’t natural ability—it was training and a skill that was unnerving. Was the surprise on her face at her own aptitude an act? Or did she secretly laugh at the fools who had been so impressed with her shooting skills? Had she been laughing at him all along—especially when she had called off the wedding and he still professed his love and desire to run away with her? Was his judgment so clouded by her beauty that he failed to see how deadly she could be? He dropped the feather as if it were a hot poker and scanned the room. Newspapers were neatly stacked on a steamer trunk across the room. Letty hovered in the background, near the threshold of the room.

He crossed to the papers. “What are these doing here?”

“Miss Mercy liked to read ’em,” Letty said. “Said it helped her fill in the blanks in her head.”

He picked up the pile of newspaper so he could lift the lid of the trunk and was surprised to see bits and pieces of newsprint float to the floor like confetti.

“I clean that up right quick, Mr. Rand,” Letty said nervously. “I gots to do a sweep of the whole room. Miss Mercy kept it neat and all, but I ain’t had no time to get those grimy handprints off a the window.”

Rand was distracted. “Did Miss Mercy have you wash out anything?”

Letty frowned. “What you mean, suh? I wash her things all the time.”

“Lately! Did she give you some soiled clothes to wash right before she left?”

But Letty shook her head. “No, suh.”

“Have you washed the bed linens?” he asked, heading toward the bed.

Letty hung her head. “No, suh, not yet. Miss Mercy had the bed made up real nice, and I haven’t torn it apart and washed up the sheets. I be doing it directly, though.”

Rand ripped the quilt from the bed—revealing nothing more than the bare mattress. “Where are the sheets?”

Letty’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Don’t know, suh.”

Rand was pawing through the bureau drawers when Ezra and Isaac appeared. He pointed to the bed.

“See if there are any bed linens under there, Isaac.”

Isaac scurried across the room and dropped to his knees to peer under the bed. He sat back on his heels. “No, suh, Mr. Rand. Nothing under there.”

Rand looked wildly around the room. The dread he’d felt coming to the cottage was rapidly being replaced by rage. Then what Letty had said earlier dawned on him.

Rand crossed to the window. He leaned toward the glass and saw fingerprints on the lower pane near the sill. But Letty had been wrong about the grime. The fingerprints were made from blood. He turned the crank to open the window and saw it. A piece of ripped white cloth fluttering from the outside of the sill. There were footprints in the soft dirt leading away from the house. Small footprints.

He raked a hand through his hair and shook his head in amazement. “She went through here,” he said under his breath.

“I’m sorry, suh,” Ezra said. “You say something?”

Rand bolted from the room and nearly ran down Kizzy as she crossed the parlor. “Move!” he shouted as he made his way outside.

Ezra and Isaac followed him to the back of the cottage. Rand trailed the footprints that led to a thatch of cattails as tall as he was. Ezra was right on his heels.

“Can I help ya somehow, Mr. Rand? What you be looking for?”

But the blood was pounding in Rand’s head.
Rebel soldier … traitor … arsonist and would-be assassin.
He insisted he wouldn’t find what he was looking for, even as he dropped to his knees at a freshly dug place in the earth. He didn’t wait for a shovel, just started digging at the ground. Ezra got down and helped him, and before long they unearthed the first bits of the end of his love for Mercy. The sheet was torn and streaked with blood; the men’s trousers were intact, but the wool shirt had a sizable hole ripped across the shoulder and was caked in dried blood. Ezra pulled a large wooden spoon from the hole and held it up.

“Kizzy been looking for this,” he said.

Rand slowly got to his feet, leaned down, and brushed the dirt from the knees of his pants. Everything he’d read in the journal was true. Mercy was a Confederate soldier at heart and was still at war—and she had tried to kill John Henderson.

Rand wondered at the speed at which love could turn to hate and started to gather the evidence to bring Mercy to justice.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
O
NE

It was shouting that roused Mercy from a sound sleep in the predawn hours, and for a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was.

The angry voices were incongruous with the soft-spoken sisters. She threw the quilt back on the cot and sat up at the same time Oona and Deirdre were also reacting to the noise.

“What in the world?” Oona asked, her sleepy eyes widening.

Deirdre pushed the covers back from her pallet on the floor. “It’s some kind of a fight,” she said. “Sounds like my brothers when they were about to come to blows.”

Twelve-year-old Frankie and ten-year-old Thomas stood in the middle of the common room, fists clenched and eyes flashing with anger. Nearly all the nuns spilled into the room in their nightclothes—a sight Mercy had never seen and would have laughed at had it been any other circumstance.

“What is the meaning of this, boys?” Mother Helena stepped between the two boys circling each other.

“His father was a good-for-nothing Yankee,” Frankie said.

“And his father was a dirty reb!” Thomas shouted. “Same kind of dirty reb that killed my pa at Antietam!”

“Maybe it
was
him!” Frankie yelled. “Stinkin’ Yankees trying to steal away our way of life!”

“That is enough!” Mother Helena said. “I won’t have that kind of talk in this house, boys. And I certainly won’t allow physical blows on this property!”

The boys didn’t take their eyes from each other, but they lowered their fists. Frankie’s eyes filled with tears. “It ain’t right I’m sleeping in the same room as someone from the Union side of things.”

“I don’t like it no better than you,” Thomas said.

“We are not divided by North or South here,” Mother Helena said. “And there is no place in God’s house for the kind of venom you boys are spewing. The war is over, and it was ugly. What you need to remember is you have something in common now. You both know how it feels to lose a father you loved. If there is to be further discussion about your fathers, let it be about that.”

The boys remained silent. Mother Helena put a hand on each of their shoulders. “I think we’re done here, are we not?”

Frankie and Thomas nodded.

“Good,” Mother Helena said. Then she looked at the audience of sisters standing around her as if seeing them for the first time. “Well, Sisters, dawn is breaking. I suggest we get an early start on prayers once everyone is in proper attire.”

Mercy followed Deirdre and Oona back to their room, uneasy at what had just transpired. She couldn’t wait for Rand to come and get her and take her far, far away from it all.

The knock on the door came around midmorning when Mercy was in the middle of a board game with two of the children. She went to the window and looked out to see Rand’s horse, Sherman, tied under a tree. Her heart leapt in excitement when she realized it was time. The day. The day when everything was going to change for her. She heard Deirdre go to the door and had the passing thought that she and Rand would have to make up a story for Deirdre. Maybe Rand would have to leave, and then she and Lucky would follow when no one was looking.

Deirdre came into the common room. “Mercy … Rand would like to speak to you. I told him you wouldn’t want to see him …”

Mercy tried to still her nerves and put on a proper face for Deirdre. She sighed. “It’s all right, Deirdre. I’ll see him.”

Deirdre nodded, then stepped aside as Mercy made her way to the door. Rand stood framed with sunlight behind him, and she thought he looked so handsome. She looked behind her to make sure she was alone, then let herself smile.

“I didn’t expect you in the daytime,” she said quietly, excitement underlying her words. “What will I tell everyone?”

“How about the truth?” Rand said. Mercy felt a twinge of unease at his stance, his expression. This wasn’t the face of a man about to elope with his bride.

“What do you mean? Tell them that we’re going to run away together?”

“That would be a lie,” he said coldly. “But then, you’re very familiar with the concept of lying to people who matter to you, aren’t you?”

He stared. A glare so long and chilling that Mercy had trouble swallowing down the lump of fear that had formed in her throat.

“I don’t know what—”

Rand reached out and grabbed her arm, and she grimaced.