Circle of Spies (3 page)

“Something is wrong, but not with them. Please, Mari. For once in your life, stop fighting and do what I ask.”

He looked so serious, the lines in his face deepening. She nodded and complied, even though her corset seemed tighter with each step they took.

She had managed to avoid the carriage house and stables for more than a year and would have been happy to make it two. Not that any sour memories were connected to this particular building. It was the similar one at her parents' that made her teeth grind together.

And the arrogant, infuriating man who had once mucked stalls there and now stood in
her
outbuilding, pitchfork in hand. She should have dismissed him years ago. Should have refused her brother's pleading. Should have slapped that patronizing smile from Walker Payne's face the first time he put it on.

“Morning, Walker.” Granddad said it with sobriety rather than cheer. Unusual for him.

Walker went still. He used his coat sleeve to wipe his forehead as he turned, a bit of a flush in his pale brown skin, an icy calm in his strange silver-blue eyes. “Mr. Lane.” His gaze landed on her. “Princess.”

Marietta withdrew her arm from Granddad's so she could fold it with her other over her chest. “Are you still working here? I'd have thought you would have run off by now, looking for the next rush of adventure.”

Rather than rising to the bait or mentioning the wife and child that kept him chained to her household, he looked back to Granddad. “Are you sure about this, Mr. Lane?”

Were she a cat, her hackles would have risen. Whatever Granddad wanted to say to her, Walker obviously knew about it.

“It's the only way.” Granddad drew in a long breath and caught her gaze. “Mari, I need to know where you stand. On the war.”

Of all the… “You question my loyalty? And in front of
him
?”

“Walker is family.”

“One's great-grandmother being your housekeeper does not make one family!”

Walker, for some reason known only to the convoluted workings of his self-important mind, smiled. “How sorely I've missed you, Yetta.”

A breath of cynical laughter slipped out. He was no doubt as unhappy about his presence here as she was but just as bound by his word to Stephen.

“Could you children stop snapping at each other? We only have a few minutes.” Her grandfather led her deeper into the building, where the nauseating scent of hay and horses filled her nose. “Mari, I have no choice but to question you. Baltimore, all of Maryland, is a house divided. You married into a family with firm Southern roots—”

“Really, Granddad. Mother Hughes has been questioned enough on this subject. She may be from New Orleans, but her husband was as solid a Union man as you.” Her arms slid down to wrap around her middle. Just an attempt to keep her hands warm, that was all.

“I am asking about
you
, Mari.”

Why was she born to live through this blasted war? All she had wanted was to go to the theater, to entertain her friends, to dance until
her feet ached. A world that seemed so far removed now. “My brother gave his life for the Union. How can you question where I stand?”

“Your cousin gave his life for the Confederacy in the very same battle. How can I help but question?”

Again tears stung…though tears for Stephen seemed somehow different than those born of regrets for Lucien. “Stephen was my best friend.” Her only friend, when it came down to it.

Granddad slid closer. “Does that mean his cause is your cause? One you believe in enough to fight for? To risk dying for?”

Her arms went limp, and icy air nipped at her fingers. “You are scaring me.”

“I mean to. Walker?”

Her brother's friend nodded and motioned them to follow him. “This way.”

A draft of vicious wind whistled through the building, making a chill skitter up her spine. “Where are we going?”

Granddad rested a hand against the small of her back. To lend comfort or to spur her onward if her feet faltered? “What do you know about the Knights of the Golden Circle?”

“The KGC?” The wind seemed colder. “That they're a Copperhead group. A Southern-sympathizing social club that boasts hundreds of thousands of members.”

“Social club?” Granddad's short laugh sounded dry. “Perhaps for many of those hundreds of thousands, but not for the high-level members. It is a very serious organization, one with a very dangerous agenda.”

“Promoting slavery. I know.”

Walker came to such an abrupt halt that she nearly ran into his back. His eyes shot shards of ice at her. “You want to say that a little more flippantly next time, princess?”

She dimpled and batted her lashes. “Perhaps I could try if you could be more sensitive to the subject.”

“Enough.” Her grandfather's tone sounded mournful, bringing her gaze back to his face. “This is serious, Mari. A matter of murder and treason, of the deliberate destruction of the Union—and of which Lucien had a part, and Devereaux too.”

“Nonsense. They both pledged their loyalty to the Union.” Words that came so easily.

But Granddad shook his head, no hint of a jest in his eyes. “Only in words. Think of that unexplained delay in reopening the rail lines last year. Their ties to the land in Louisiana.”

Conversations between the Hugheses buzzed in her ears, images flashed. If she were to look at them in that light…but no, it couldn't be. She shook it off. “Half the city likely belongs to the KGC.”

The two men exchanged a glance that made her want to grit her teeth again. Granddad nodded, and Walker moved onward, his pace quick.

Marietta held her cape closed and wished she had taken the time to grab gloves or a muff. Her fingers were at the painful place between chilled and numb. “What does this have to do with me?”

“You will see soon enough. First, answer me this. What color dress were you wearing on the fifteenth of May in eighteen fifty?”

Of all the random… “Yellow, but I don't see what—”

“What is the first word on the third line on the second page of the fifth book upon the shelf in your room?”

He wanted to play games? Out here in the cold, in the smelly stables with that patronizing man? She lifted her chin. “I haven't read the fifth book.”

“The fourth then.”

She shook her head and stared at Walker's back when he stopped in the last stall and fooled with the hay. “It's ‘yesterday,' but I—”

“What was the eighth word I spoke to you the last time we had dinner?”

“ ‘This,' though I can hardly think what—”

“Well, it's time to think, Mari.” Granddad's gaze combined sorrow with determination. “Time to use that mind of yours for something other than drawing room repartee. Your memory is
perfect
.”

Walker knelt down and slid aside a board.

Marietta waved a hand at Granddad's words. “A parlor trick.”

“A gift of God.” He gripped her arm, a silent bid for her to look at him. Though when she saw the furor in his eyes, she wished she hadn't. “You have perfect recall, beyond even your grandmother's. Perhaps she can draw anything she sees, but you—your recollection extends to what you've heard, what you've done, when things happened. Do you not realize how rare that is? How special you are?”

Walker's scoffing laugh gave her the urge to place her half boot upon his back and give him a nice little kick into… “What is that hole?” Her voice felt strangled, frozen.

“Come see.” Walker held out his hands, as if they were still children. As if she could trust him.

She took a step back. “If you think for even a moment that I will descend into some dank pit—”

“We have a very small window of time, Mari. Go.” Granddad's hand on her back urged her onward.

But it was the glint of challenge in Walker's eyes that made her huff over to him. She tamped down the shudder when he lowered her into the black, yawning space. Followed him with chin held high when Granddad handed down a lantern and brought up the rear.

A tunnel. They were in a tunnel that stretched toward her house. “What is this?”

“I didn't want to bring you into this business, Mari.” Her grandfather's voice echoed strangely off the timber walls. “When my parents passed the mantle of the Culpers to me, and then when I shared it with your father and uncles and Walker and Hez, there was always an understanding that we would shield the family who wanted no part of it. You. Ize. Most of your cousins. But we have no choice now.”

Each word fell like a hammer upon a chisel, etching themselves into her mind. Yet with more force than normal words, with finality. “Culpers?”

Granddad prodded her onward. “The Culper Ring started in the Revolution. My mother was a spy in British-held New York, passing information through a collection of friends until it reached General Washington.”

“Great-Grandmama Winter—a spy?” Impossible. Her portrait made her look like such a normal woman.

“When I took over during the next war with the British—”

“You?” The world tipped. Her laugh did nothing to right it. “Granddad, you are not a spy.”

“Here we are.” Walker set down the lantern and put his shoulder to a break in the timbers. “It will open only a foot, but it's enough to get a glimpse. It's a Knights' castle, no question.”

A castle, one of their secret lairs? Here, between her home and
her carriage house? It could not be. And to prove it could not be, she grabbed the lantern, thrust it through the opening, and stuck her head in after it.

The walls were papered with charts and maps, lines drawn over them helter-skelter. Some of the North, with stars upon the major cities, some of the South, stretching all the way to Texas. One of the entire hemisphere, with a circle drawn around Havana as a center. Papers pinned with what looked like gibberish upon them. And there, nearly out of the dim circle of light, one of Lincoln's election posters. But with “King” scrawled above his name, and a cruel-looking X drawn through his face in an ink more red-brown than lampblack, something nearly the color of…

“Oh, God in heaven.” Blood, it was blood. She stumbled back and would have dropped the light had Walker not rescued it. Would have fallen had her grandfather not caught her.

He held her fast. “That had better be a genuine beseeching of the Almighty, Mari, because we need to fall to our knees before Him. They are going to harm the president if we don't stop them. And we've done all we can from the outside.”

“Not Dev. Please, not Dev.”

Walker eased the opening shut and watched her closely in the golden light. “He's the captain of this castle, Yetta. He took over after Lucien died.”

No. She squeezed shut her eyes, but that did nothing to blur the implications. If Granddad spoke rightly, then both of them had lied to her. Had told her she was the most important thing in the world but had undermined all her family stood for. Had made a fool of her. Had they been
using
her, her family's connections?

If it were true… “What is it you want from me?”

Granddad gave her a squeeze. “Allan Pinkerton is sending in a man. He has been in communication with Dev and ought to be arriving in town any day. You cannot let either of them know you realize what they are about, but you have to protect him where you can, Mari. Make sure he has the opportunities he needs to find information.”

“His name's Slade Osborne. A New Yorker by birth, but more recently of Chicago. He's part of Pinkerton's Intelligence Service.” Walker reached out and took her hand in his. Audacious, yes.
Inappropriate too. And oh, how it reminded her of happier days. “Can you do this, Yetta?”

She saw again that red-brown slash upon the yellowed poster. Shivered at the hatred that must have inspired the defacing. Had the same hand that so recently cupped her cheek marked the president's image for destruction? Had the lips that had kissed her sworn treason?

She didn't know. And the not-knowing made her knees want to buckle. For the first time in too many years, she turned her mind to prayer.

Oh, God, if it's true…What have I done?

Two

S
lade Osborne planted his feet on the wooden platform at Camden Station and waited for the locomotive's steam to clear. In the bleak January sunshine, Baltimore looked as he had come to expect—gray, dreary, frayed. A city on the edge of chaos. Hence the many Union uniforms milling about with dour-faced soldiers inside them.

He scanned the buildings, the muddy streets. Even never having seen Devereaux Hughes, he would know him. He would be well dressed, have a charming smile, and eyes as hard as the rails that paved his way to fortune. He'd no doubt send that skitter of warning up Slade's spine. The self-same one that had made him spin around a second before his brother meant to put a sledge to his skull.