Gwyneth Atlee (27 page)

Why had Darien taken her away from that bright place, where she could
be with her sister and her brother? Why couldn’t he let her die in peace?
A voice pulled her back to this world.
“You sick, lying bastard, I’ll send you to hell.” Gabriel’s voice, so
very angry.
“You go on ahead”—Darien spoke this time, and bursts of panic
detonated in her stomach—”and keep your little harlot company.”
He meant to hurt Gabriel! But what could she do to prevent it? It
took all her strength to force open her eyes and peer through the
strands of loose hair that had fallen across her face.
She heard a gun click on an empty chamber. Her vision focused just
in time to see the smugness evaporate from Darien’s features. An
instant later, Gabe leapt at him, knocking him to the ground, hammering him again and again, long beyond the point where the captain
stopped resisting.
Yvette had never seen such savage fury. In spite of what Darien had
done to her today, in spite of the horrible way he’d killed her sister, she
despised most of all the transformation he had wrought in Gabriel,
who had loved so gently. God help her, she would not let Darien turn
him into a murderer!
“No . . .” she moaned, putting all her heart into that single syllable.
Even so, the word was barely audible.
Yet Gabriel froze, immobilized by the unexpected sound. His fist
stopped half an inch from Russell’s face, as if he’d been paralyzed by
terror. He didn’t turn toward her or even move his eyes, and she
found herself wondering what he thought he would see if he looked
toward her. Did he think the sound of her voice just another apparition,
like that of his dead brother on the battlefield? Did he imagine if he
turned his head, he would see her body, now beginning to cool and
stiffen with the finality of death?
Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on Russell’s blood-streaked face.
Even from this vantage, Yvette could see that the captain’s nose was
surely broken and several of his teeth had collapsed into jagged
shards. Yet his breath rasped noisily through his shattered mouth. He
might be unconscious, but he lived.
At least for now.
“No,” she repeated, this time slightly louder. “There’s been enough
death . . . Gabriel.”
This time, he could no more help turning toward her than the
great river can help moving toward the sea. She attempted—without
success—to push herself up on one elbow. Her raven tresses, which
had come unbound, fell across her eyes to completely obscure
her vision.
She heard his footsteps and sensed, rather than saw, Gabriel kneeling
down beside her. He brushed her hair from her face with a caress so
tender that she barely felt his fingertips.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “Thank God for you, Yvette.”
Carefully, he pulled her into his embrace, rocking her as one might
an infant. She felt moisture where their faces touched. It might have
been his tears or her own or both. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered
except that love remained. And that they both lived to see it through.

“You stand accused of horse theft, Private,” the white-haired
colonel said sternly. Though he sat in one of the parlor’s chairs, he had
not invited Gabe to do the same.

Gabe had lost whatever patience he’d possessed for this sort of idiocy.
His thoughts were with Yvette, who had been taken upstairs to be
examined by a doctor. He’d explained her case first, from what had
happened with her sister to her desperate flight toward safety. But
Colonel Patterson had yet to comment on anything he’d said.

Outside, thunder murmured, and the first raindrops tapped at the
windows.
“Are you angrier because I whipped an officer or because I dared
think for myself?” Gabe demanded. “God knows, this army has
done its best at every turn to punish soldiers for the slightest sign of
personal initiative.”
Colonel Patterson opened his mouth as if to protest, but Gabe cut
him off before a single word erupted.
“I understood Russell’s intentions when I saw him take Yvette—
Miss Augeron,” he hastily corrected. “I’m still army personnel, so I
used an army mount to follow. Would you rather I allowed the captain
to lynch this woman because he was an officer? Would you prefer—”
“Calm down, soldier!” the colonel interrupted. Pointing to the other
chair, he ordered, “Now sit.”
After taking a deep breath, Gabe complied. Shouting at this man
wasn’t going to help either Yvette or him out of this mess.
A pair of kittens bounded into the room. A silver tabby chased its
gray-and-white littermate beneath the colonel’s desk.
Patterson paid them no heed but continued speaking to Gabriel,
“Fortunately for you, I received a telegram this afternoon from a
Colonel Jeffers, stationed in New Orleans. He asked me to detain
Captain Russell. Apparently evidence has been found to implicate him
in the same crimes of which Miss Augeron had been accused.”
“You
knew?
Then how could you let him—?”
“I’m not going to ask you again, Private Davis. You will remain
silent until such time as I ask you a question or give you leave to
speak. Is that understood? Answer me.” A flash of lightning lit his
stern face, and the rain came faster, harder.
Reluctantly, Gabe nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I did not receive this telegram until after Captain Russell left
the premises. I sent soldiers to arrest him, but by that time, he’d
disappeared. Private Davis, I am given to understand that you’ve
become involved with this young woman. Is that true?”
“Yes, sir,” Gabe admitted. He had no intention of denying it, even if
he would be punished for consorting with an enemy.
“You’re in love with her?”
Gabe nodded, wondering how far Patterson’s line of questioning
would go. He refused to reveal private details. Because, colonel or not,
Gabe knew he’d pound the man who made lewd comments about the
sacred act he and Yvette had shared.
Surprisingly, Patterson’s expression softened. “I’ve seen a lot of
ugliness during this war, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. So
much that I thought I’d grown immune to horror. But when I saw the
bruises on that poor girl’s neck . . . What Russell did deserves—”
He shook his head, and anger flicked across his features—real
anger, not the annoyance he had shown at Gabe’s outburst. “I’m only
glad it was you that caught the bastard and not me. Otherwise, he
wouldn’t have lived long enough to stand trial. And long enough to
experience the legal hanging he deserves.”
“You think he will hang?”
“Without a question.”
The colonel stood and offered Gabriel a crisp salute. “You’re a brave
man, Private, to steal a horse and face an armed enemy to try to
prevent the murder of a Southern woman. A very brave man, and I’ll
see personally that you don’t suffer for it.”
Gabe rose and returned the salute. “Thank you, sir, but what about
Miss Augeron . . . Yvette?”
“We’ll need to take her statement and get this sorted out, but if what
you’ve told me can be corroborated, she has no more to fear.”
Something distracted Patterson, and he peered beneath his desk.
Raising his voice, he shouted, “Lieutenant Thompson, come and get
these kittens out of here!”
The gray-and-white fugitive made a dash for freedom, but Gabriel
scooped it up before it could escape.
“If you’d like,” he offered, scarcely believing what it was that he
was saying, “I’d be happy to take this little rascal off your hands.”

Yvette sat on the bed, staring numbly through the window. Mrs.
Beacon had it scrubbed so clean that only the slight distortion caused
by its thickness indicated she was looking through clear glass instead
of air. Subtle as the glass was, she felt cut off behind it, separated from
the world she had reentered.

As she glanced down at the telegram, the same sense of unreality
persisted, for the words confirmed a fact she’d known already. Her
brother, François, had been killed by Union soldiers in one of the final
battles of the war.

The fingers of her left hand touched the line of tenderness at
her neck, and her skin rippled with a chill. A Yank had done that,
too, but against the odds,
her
Yankee had saved her. Her mind
could reconcile what had happened, but how could she be sure of
her heart?

Her brother had died in Tennessee. How far from here? she
wondered. Uncle André’s message indicated he felt she must
return to the Quarter, just as François would be coming home this
one, last time.

Yvette had thought that with Uncle André there would be some
choice, that he would ask her what she wanted instead of just assuming. She’d thought he would be different, since he’d broken away from
the claustrophobic expectations of New Orleans in general and of
Grandmère Augeron in particular.

Will arrive soon to escort you New Orleans.
Those words suggested
that to his way of thinking, she was nothing but a young, unmarried
woman, someone whose decisions must be made by wiser heads. He
would try to do well for her. Just as they all would, but they would
never think of asking her her mind. After all, her last attempts at independent thought had resulted in such tragedy, such scandal, that it
was a wonder they would take her back at all. She knew beyond doubt
that no one in the family would ever admit that her father’s judgment
of Darien Russell had been flawed. Just as no one would ever believe
that Yvette, who had stepped beyond the limits of her convent schooling
and her strict upbringing, had not been somehow guilty of causing
this whole disgraceful episode.

And if she tried to tell them that she wished to marry Gabriel, a
common Yankee soldier, they’d lock her away, convinced the strain of
these past weeks had driven her out of her mind. They’d never allow
her to speak to him, much less see him, again.

And yet the thought of deliberately turning her back on all of
them—especially poor François— broke her heart. He’d been the
brother closest to her own age, and Yvette remembered the hours
they all had passed together in the nursery, under the watchful
eyes of Mama Séverine, a slave whose embraces had been far
warmer than their distant mother’s. François had been less
inclined to rowdiness than either of his brothers. His tastes ran
more to reading and to music, and both his sisters loved him for
it. In fact, given his gentler nature, Yvette had been surprised
when he had volunteered. Even now, she wondered if he’d done
it to make up for Jules’s weak heart and somehow ease their
brother’s guilt.

And now he’d died because Jules had not been strong enough to go
to war. Thinking of her brothers brought grief crashing over her like a
fresh wave. Grief for Pierre’s lost arm, for François’s death, and for the
guilt that would likely fester in Jules’s soul. Could she truly abandon
all of them to run off with Gabriel?

A tap at the door interrupted her thoughts and startled the grayand-white kitten that Gabriel had brought to try to cheer her.
Chanson, as she’d been christened, puffed out her fur and hid behind
Yvette’s skirt.

Yvette’s heart beat faster. For a moment, she’d forgotten that Darien
Russell was in Officers’ Hospital, under guard. She no longer had to
fear that he would find her.

Nor was she certain she wished for Uncle André to come and solve
her problems. Praying it would not be him, she scooped up the kitten,
then cracked open the door.

“Oh, Gabriel, come in, please,” she told him, feeling a bit guilty
they hadn’t disabused Mrs. Beacon of the fiction that they were man
and wife.

Without a word of greeting or even a touch, he walked past her, his
eyes so filled with pain that it could only mean one thing.
“You have found them?” Yvette asked, speaking of the friends he’d
gone in search of, whose disappearance clearly haunted him.
She set Chanson down on a chair. She wanted badly to drape
her uninjured arm around Gabriel, to pull him close to her. But
something warned her that her touch might be unwelcome, so she
hesitated, fingers trembling like marsh grasses touched by wind.
“I went from hospital to hospital to see if their names might have
been left off the lists. Then I looked at body after body, and . . .”
He looked at her, and it was as if he saw her for the first time. But
instead of turning away, he stepped nearer and pulled her gently
against him.
She said nothing, trusting him to tell her when he could, knowing
that the contact of their bodies relayed the contents of their hearts far
more perfectly than the vagaries of language.
“Colonel Patterson says they all must be presumed dead,” Gabriel
continued. “He says that many of the victims will never be recovered.
But I can’t—I won’t— give up on them. They wouldn’t give up on me.
Those men kept me
alive!”
Yvette nodded against him. “It is the waiting that’s the hardest.
Those days after Marie disappeared . . . and then my brother François.
One would think that all the torment of not knowing would somehow
soften the blow of finding out.”
Her voice broke, and Gabriel pulled her even closer, then began to
stroke her hair.
“Tell me,” he whispered, and she felt the warm moisture of his
breath against her crown.
The words lodged in her throat, so she pulled away to retrieve the
telegram. Handing it to him, she waited solemnly while he read.
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel told her. Then he hesitated, as if he feared the
words he would next say. “What will you do now?”
He had asked her. Unlike Uncle André and her family, he had asked
her
what she would do. And that one question made up her mind
completely.
“I will tell my uncle to go on without me. I want to stay with you
while you keep looking,” Yvette answered. “Everything else can wait.”
And she knew she meant it.
She
would wait. Uncle André, her
parents, and her grandmère wouldn’t,
couldn’t,
understand. But Marie
would . . . just as would François. They would both want her to be
happy with the man she loved.
“No,” he whispered, turning her face toward his. And this time,
when he spoke to her, she breathed in every level of his meaning.
“Everything
cannot. That’s one thing that I’ve learned. Nothing, nothing
lasts forever, so putting off happiness is inexcusable.”
With that, he closed the gap between them and took her into his
arms. They kissed, neither in control, neither dominated by the
other, but only by the power of a passion based on love. When
finally he pulled his mouth away, it was to tell her. “Marry me,
Yvette. Please . . . marry me this minute.”
She took his hand and kissed it, then gently nipped the fingertips,
just as he had hers before. Smiling at his gasp of pleasure, she helped
him undo the top buttons of her bodice. “I will marry you today, but
first . . . there is one pleasure that we need not postpone.”