Erin's Rebel (3 page)

“Who the hell
are
you?” she asked.

“Pardon me, ma’am?”

His gaze chilled her blood. He looked exactly like the man in the antique photo she’d found between the pages of her grandmother’s Bible. If he were the man in the photo, where was she? Maybe the crash had killed her, and she was now in the afterlife. And like the man who called himself Doc, this man had
also
called her Mrs. O’Connell. Grandma Rose’s great-aunt. Something wasn’t right.

Unable to voice her fears, she stared open-mouthed at the man.

“Will,” Doc said. “I think Mrs. O’Connell’s having trouble with her memory.”

“Her memory?”

“The fall from the horse,” Doc explained, “seems to have affected her memory—even her speech. Her nose was bleeding a bit, and she has a fair-sized lump on the back of her head.”

Will frowned.

Erin’s mind reeled. This couldn’t be the same man she’d researched.

The men looked at her, waiting for a response.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” she said. “I was never on a horse.” She squeezed her eyes shut as the pain increased, then blinked furiously so she could focus.

Doc glanced at Will as if to confirm his diagnosis, then pressed a cool, damp towel against her forehead.

“Ma’am.” Will removed his hat. “I would advise you to stay put until Doc says you can go back to your tent.”

“I don’t have a tent,” she grated between clenched teeth.

The men exchanged glances.

“It’s worse than I thought,” Doc said.

“You say the fall affected her speech?” Will scowled.

“There’s no other way to explain it.”

“What’s wrong with the way I talk?” she asked.

“You’ve lost your lilting brogue, for one thing,” Will said, “unless that was an act.”

She stretched out on the cot, as her stomach lurched again. “Look. All I want to do is go home.”

“
This
is your home,” Will said, “since you signed on as camp laundress two weeks ago. Or have you forgotten that, too?”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“Are you having second thoughts, Mrs. O’Connell?”

“I told you, I’m not—” She froze in mid-sentence. They would never believe she wasn’t Erin O’Connell.

Despite the pain slicing through her head, she slowly sat up. “I need a mirror.”

Doc glanced at Will.

“A mirror!” she repeated. Her heart hammered in overdrive, and her head felt ready to explode. Doc rummaged among the contents on the table, producing a small, wood-framed hand mirror.

Blinking back the blinding pain, she stared at her reflection. Her own eyes stared back, wide and bright blue. The face was hers, yet it wasn’t. The cheeks were a bit rounder. Her skin was pale. No make-up. Red-gold hair tumbled over her shoulders.

Touching her neck, she noted the maroon-checked dress she wore was topped with a starched, white collar stained with blood. She fingered a small, ivory-stoned brooch at her throat.

In the photo, her Civil War relative had worn her hair parted in the center and pulled back off her face, but otherwise, she was looking at a live portrait of her great-great-great-aunt. Erin O’Connell – Federal spy.

Chapter Three

Jake Wagner straddled his camp stool then lowered himself, perching a tin plate of bacon and runny eggs on his knees. His mug of chicory coffee sat at his feet. As he raised his fork to dig in, Charlie Ross lumbered up beside him, settling his bulky frame on a stool across from Jake.

“Smells mighty good.” Charlie licked his lips and grinned, exposing a row of large, brown teeth nearly hidden in his long, wiry beard.

Jake glanced sidelong at the big man whose thick, black hair stood out in disarray under his wide-brimmed, black felt hat. “And it’s all mine.” He waved his fork over the food. “It’s the last of my meat ration for the week.”

Charlie chuckled. “I’m not here to beg. Jest wanted to sit for a spell and commune.”

After stabbing his fork into his eggs, Jake shoved them into his mouth and chewed in earnest. Smoke from his fire pit drifted along the row of tents toward the wooded area that fringed camp. His gaze lifted to the couple picking their way around smoking grates.

Erin O’Connell clasped the arm of Captain Montgomery. He covered her small hand with his as she nodded at something he said. Jake scowled.

Following his gaze, Charlie said, “Reckon you best keep watch on that sweetheart of yours. Montgomery outranks you, and the ladies all say he’s mighty handsome.”

“She’s not my sweetheart. That Irish woman’s nothing but a whore.”

The big man guffawed. “You’ve no cause to be jealous, then.”

“Jealous? Why in tarnation would I be jealous?”

“She
is
mighty pretty. And willing—so you say? How much does she cost?”

Jake squinted at the couple’s backs as they angled toward the laundress’ tent.

“I don’t pay her nuthin’,” he grumbled.

“She gives it away for free?” Charlie’s eyes widened.

“Not to the likes of you.” Jake glared at Erin’s retreating back. In truth, the woman hadn’t allowed him to as much as touch her. She’d just made vague promises of things to come. But he wasn’t about to admit that.

He lifted his cup and gulped the brew that passed for coffee. Since the Yankee blockade, decent coffee no longer existed in the South.

“Did you hear the ruckus last night?” Charlie pulled out a cigar, unwrapped it, and then struck a match against the heel of his brogan.

“Ruckus?”

Charlie lit the cigar, then took a puff before answering. “Dead drunk again, were you?”

Jake tried to recall where he’d been last night. He did remember waking up with an empty bottle of whiskey in his bedroll.

Charlie nodded. “I wager you finished off that bottle you wuz carryin’ around. That’s why you didn’t hear nuthin’.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Just tell me what the hell happened.”

“That Irish washer woman fell off her horse in the dead of night. Woke up half the camp.”

He frowned. Erin was on a horse? Had she been going out to meet her Federal contact?

“What happened to her?”

“She done blacked out. Captain Montgomery took her to the hospital tent. Reckon Doc fixed her up.”

Jake inclined his head. Captain Montgomery and Erin O’Connell. An unlikely pair if he ever saw one. He’d have to scrounge up some laundry for washing today so he could find out what the hell was going on.

****

After being deposited in what Captain Montgomery had said was her tent, Erin glanced at the interior of the A-shaped canvas structure. A cot with a thin, lumpy mattress topped with coarse, wool blankets and a worn patchwork quilt occupied a small space. In one corner of the tent, a small wooden table stood and held a wood-framed hand mirror, comb, brush, and hairpins. A heavy, gray cloak and cloth bonnet dangled from a peg screwed into the post supporting the tent. Looking homemade, a small, braided rug covered straw spread over the dirt floor.
Home sweet home
.

Thinking back to the captain, she recalled his hard, muscular arm beneath the sleeve of his coat and shivered. Doc had called him Will. He had taken her hand and threaded it through the crook of his elbow as he’d escorted her to this tent. While they moved through the row of tents, Captain Montgomery took care to keep her skirts from brushing against smoking fires that rose from shallow dug-out pits along the way. He’d also sternly warned her to stay off horses. As if she’d even consider climbing onto one.

Moving closer to the cot, her booted foot hit something hard beneath it and pulled her thoughts from the image and sandalwood and leather scent of Will Montgomery. Crouching, she found a ceramic, lidded pot and a large, brown trunk beneath the bed.

“There should be something here to help me make sense of this,” she muttered. She gazed at the pole running across the top of the tent. “How the hell did this happen? Grandma Rose, are
you
responsible for sending me here?”

Erin recalled the day Grandma Rose had died. She’d entered the bedroom and found her grandmother sleeping. Not wanting to disturb her, she eased herself out of the room, until a whispery voice called her back.

“Erin—child—is that you?”

“Yes, Grandma, it’s me.” She stepped back to the bed and took the old woman’s frail hand. Cool, dry skin covered her grandmother’s fragile bones.

“There’s something I must show you,” Grandma Rose said.

With a trembling hand, her grandmother pointed to a tin box resting on the bedside table.

Erin opened the box and lifted out the silver-framed brooch containing dark woven hair and a photo of Erin O’Connell. She gasped as she’d stared at the old photograph. Except for the woman’s hair parted in the center with a knot in the back and plumper cheeks, the woman could have been her.

Erin sank to the lumpy cot in her tent and raised a hand to her face. How had this happened? Everything was too real to be a dream. If only she could talk to Grandma Rose again. She’d always suspected Grandma was a mystic, although Mom had scoffed at such things.

When Erin had been a child, Grandma told her she was a descendent of practitioners of a mysterious Celtic sect. But her mother had been far too pragmatic to entertain the old woman’s stories of the supernatural, telling Erin her grandmother liked to spin fanciful tales.

Now, she wondered, could Grandma have some kind of influence on events beyond the grave? Maybe the trunk would shed light on the situation.

Kneeling, she pulled the heavy chest out and opened it. A blue patterned dress sat neatly folded on top. She lifted it out and rifled through the other contents—long cotton slips with wide ruffles at the hem, a few aprons, a thick green and blue plaid shawl, and a corset. She held the white cotton garment, decorated with pale blue ribbons, and stretched it out before her.

“All right, Grandma, just what did you get me into?”

She laid the corset on the cot, then resumed her search. She pulled out several pairs of white cotton stockings, three white cotton, capped-sleeved shifts that looked like nightgowns, and two pairs of long, flat, stretchy white bands.
What the hell are these?
At the bottom of the trunk, her fingers brushed against something hard. Pulling the object from beneath mounds of clothing, she gasped in delight at the sight of a hardback book. Her fingers skimmed over the plain, deep blue leather cover. After opening it, she noted ragged edges where the first few pages had been torn out. The remaining pages had been penned with small, neat, cursive handwriting. Her hands stilled as she studied the script. The penmanship looked familiar. She could almost believe she’d written this, although she’d never before seen this journal.

Her heart thudded, and she tried to focus on the words.

“Hello, Miss Erin?”

Startled, she shut the book and shoved it back under the cot.

“Are you there?” A female voice with an Irish brogue preceded a round, cheerful face, peering into the tent. “Sorry to disturb you, but Doc told me you’d be needing help.”