His Heart's Revenge (The Marshall Brothers Series, Book 2) Page 3

  * * *

  "I want to see you, Mary Catherine," the colonel said. His voice was chilling. He had opened the door to Mary Catherine's room just far enough to poke his head through. She was curled on the far side of her bed, her back to him. He saw her stir, relax, then become rigid as she realized she had not mistaken the intrusion for any part of a dream. She didn't turn to face him. "Now," he said. "Downstairs, in my study. Don't pretend you haven't heard me, because I know better. And don't take the time to dress."

  After the door shut, Mary Catherine lay there, frozen, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hands locked into rigid, white-knuckled fists. She could feel him outside the door—waiting. The colonel was a cougar, a sharp-eyed, heartless predator.

  "Now," he repeated stonily from the hallway.

  Mary Catherine shivered. Every sense alert, she heard him walk away from the door, pause at the top of the staircase, then trip lightly down the carpeted steps. Downstairs the study door opened and closed.

  She sat up and pulled on the robe lying at the foot of her bed. The hardwood floor was cold on the bare soles of her feet. Where was her mother? Megan? Her apron was hanging over the top rung of a ladder-back chair. She checked the pocket. The dispatch was gone. Her mother had probably taken it last night when she returned from the belli. Mary Catherine wondered what time that had been. She had tried so hard to stay up but even the heady excitement of her first mission wasn't enough to keep her awake. Had her mother been pleased?

  The carpeted hallway was warmer. The door to the guest room was closed. Mary Catherine was tempted to see if Logan had already left, but she didn't act on the urge. The house was very quiet. She listened for sounds that Angel was moving around in the kitchen or tidying one of the parlors. Nothing. Mary Catherine was suddenly very afraid she was alone in the house with Colonel Allen.

  Her palm was slippery on the brass door handle. She had to grip it twice to twist it. The colonel was sitting at his desk when she entered. He turned in his chair, motioned to her to close the door, and then crooked his index finger at her to indicate she should approach.

  Mary Catherine did so cautiously. "Yes, sir? You wanted to see me?" For the first time she noticed he was holding something between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it back and forth. Her face paled. The thing that looked like a toothpick at first glance was one of her hairpins.

  The colonel patted his knee. "Come here, Mary Catherine. I think we should talk."

  She hesitated until his green-yellow eyes narrowed. She came to stand between his splayed knees. The movement of his thumb and forefinger was mesmerizing. When he touched her wrist she sat down on his knee without the slightest protest. One hand was at the small of her back, steadying her.

  "What is this, Mary Catherine?" His fingers stopped moving. He held up the hairpin so she could see it clearly.

  "It looks like one of my hairpins, sir."

  Her honesty caught him off guard momentarily. "That's what I thought. Do you know where I found it?"

  She shook her head. "May I have it, please?"

  "In a moment. After you tell me what you were doing in my desk."

  Mary Catherine imagined herself on stage. The audience was hushed as they waited for her response. She could feel their anticipation. They were with her, urging her to find a way out of the trap. "You're mistaken, Colonel. I wasn't in your desk." She heard the audience gasp. She should have thought of something better to say or given her voice more conviction. "I was in your study to wake Mr. Marshall and make sure he had some dinner. I could have dropped the hairpin then."

  "I'm certain that's when it happened," he said, watching her carefully. He put the hairpin on the desktop. Now free, his hand moved to the side of Mary Catherine's face. The backs of his fingers touched her downy cheek. Her skin was velvet soft. His thumb touched the corner of her mouth.

  Mary Catherine hid her revulsion. Beyond the footlights the audience held its collective breath. Here was a stunning performance. "I don't understand," she said. Her voice barely broke a whisper. She couldn't look at the colonel. His face would be flushed, his eyes dark. He wanted something from her, but he never said what it was, never told her more than that he wanted to touch her. Still, even to Mary Catherine's young eyes, he always seemed expectant.

  "Tell me about the hairpin," he said. "That's what you used to pick the lock to my desk. Your mistake was to use another pin to lock it up again. You left the first one in plain view on the desktop. I saw it as soon as I lifted the cover this morning. I've straightened it already but it was slightly bent when I found it. What were you looking for, Mary Catherine?"

  The neckline of her cotton nightshift was rounded. Her robe wasn't closed tightly enough to shield the smooth line of her collarbone from the colonel's gaze. She could feel his eyes on her. His fingers trailed from her cheek to her throat. She held herself very still.

  "Was it money? Is that what you hoped to find?"

  How foolish she had been! Of course the colonel wouldn't suspect she was a spy. Money was the obvious answer. She should have thought of it herself. Mary Catherine averted her head, feigning shame and guilt.

  "I thought as much." He sighed. His large hand cupped the side of her neck. He could feel the wild flutter of her heartbeat in her throat. She was a fragile, fey child; he had thought so from the first. Her mother was handsome, her sister, lovely. But being with Mary Catherine made him feel powerful beyond all his imaginings. Her immature beauty drew him. It was his darkest, most guilty secret.

  "If you wanted something, you should have told me," he said. "You know I like to buy you things. You liked the shoes, didn't you?"

  She nodded.

  "Come closer, Mary Catherine, whisper in my ear. Tell me what it is you want."

  She didn't move. "I don't want anything. Really, I don't. You've given me quite enough. I'm not ungrateful." Even as she spoke, the colonel was pulling her closer. She strained against his grip.

  "Just a little kiss for the colonel," he cajoled. "One kiss, on the lips, and I'll forgive you for breaking into my desk."

  Mary Catherine wanted to cry. She hated this part of the colonel's game. She didn't want to kiss him on the lips or anywhere. The pressure on her neck increased. She gasped, a puff of air caught in the back of her throat. She felt his fingers dip just below the neckline of her shift. Her skin burned. Her ears were ringing and there was a blackness clouding the edge of her vision. She suspected she was going to faint.

  "Take your goddamn hands off her." Logan spoke from the doorway. One shoulder was braced against the jamb for support. The muscles in his forearms bunched as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

  "Now see here, Marshall, just what do you—"

  Logan crossed the room in four long strides. Mary Catherine was terrified by the hardness in his face, the repulsion in his eyes. The colonel's hold on her was even tighter than before. There would be bruises later. But as hard as her stepfather held her, it was nothing compared to the grip that Logan placed on her. His fingers ringed her upper arm and with an ease that surprised Mary Catherine and shocked the colonel, he yanked her free. She stumbled across the floor, falling to her knees as she was flung away.

  The colonel was jerked out of his chair. "How many times?" Logan demanded. "How many times have you touched her?" He didn't wait for an answer. "How long has this been going on?"

  "Look here," Allen said stiffly. Logan's youth, his strength, or his anger did not intimidate him. "I don't know what you think you saw, but you've got it all wr—"

  "Stuff it, you miserable bastard. I know exactly what I saw. I know what I heard."

  "Take your hands off me." The colonel glanced beyond Logan's shoulder to Mary Catherine. "Say something," he said impatiently. The look in his eyes was meaningful. Say the right something, it said. Remember our secret.

  "Please don't hurt him," she said. The tears that came to her eyes were real. "It's a mistake. You don't understand."

  Logan ignored her. He pushe
d the colonel backward until he had Allen pressed against the wall, his head jammed in the corner made by the wall and the mantel. The gilt-edged portrait of some long-dead relative slipped off center as Logan pulled Allen forward and slammed him against the wall again. "What have you told her?" he said with soft menace. "What makes her want to protect you?"

  Still icy under pressure, the colonel chose an alternate strategy. "I'm going to have you court-martialed."

  "I'm not one of your men. This uniform's my own, not army issue. I work for Brady and whomever else I want to. And I damn well don't want to work for you. Now, you can take your threat and do whatever you want with it—except use it on me. When I brought Rose and her daughters to your headquarters, I thought I was putting them in good hands. When I heard you were marrying Mrs. McCleary, I was happy that I'd had a small part in it. What I just witnessed made me realize how wrong I've been. Does Rose know?"

  Mary Catherine jumped to her feet. "No!" She attacked Logan from behind, sending him off balance so that he released the colonel. She pounded on his back. "No! You can't say anything! You'll ruin everything! It's a secret! Our secret! Mama can't know!"

  Twisting around, Logan caught Mary Catherine by the wrists and quieted her while the colonel slipped away. "Shh, Katy. Hush. Your mama wants to know this secret. Trust me."

  But that was the same thing the colonel had said, and he was as much the enemy as Logan Marshall. Mary Catherine did not trust anyone. The tears that flooded her eyes dripped over her cheeks. "Don't tell," she pleaded. "Everything will change. Terrible things will happen. You can't understand about secrets like this."

  Logan hugged Mary Catherine to him. The front of his shirt was damp with her tears. He watched Colonel Allen move toward the door. "Don't bother sending for someone to throw me out," he said, correctly divining Allen's intentions. "I'm leaving, and I'm taking Katy with me. She's not coming back here unless Rose decides that's what she wants."

  It was happening already, Mary Catherine thought. Only it wasn't Colonel Allen who was going to make her leave—it was Logan. "I'm not leaving! I can't! Please don't make me go!"

  "What the hell have you said to her?" Logan said. His jaw was rigid with anger, his eyes steely.

  "Listen to her, Marshall," Allen advised. "She's not supporting whatever crack-brained notion you've taken into your head. I suggest, for your own good, you get the hell out of my home and leave Mary Catherine here. You won't like the consequences otherwise."

  "I'll take my chances." He picked up Mary Catherine, who was struggling and squirming in his grasp, and carried her out of the study, past Allen, and into the bright morning sunshine.

  * * *

  Rose, Megan, and Mary Catherine left Washington later that day. Their destination was the farm homestead of Rose's second cousin just west of Richmond. There was no scandal, nor would there be. With the exception of Logan Marshall, what happened would remain a family secret. The story that circulated as a result of their hasty departure was the convenient sick relative fable. At Rose's insistence they took only a few belongings. Everything the colonel had given them seemed soiled now. Rose blamed herself for not knowing what was happening to her own child. Megan blamed her sister. Mary Catherine blamed Logan.

  That very afternoon, after an uncomfortable farewell with Rose and her daughters, Logan began the journey back to his unit at Chancellorsville. Let Allen handle the dispatch, he thought. He'd done what he was supposed to do. For the first time in recent memory Logan was actually glad to be returning to the field.

  He wasn't particularly surprised when he didn't make it. He had anticipated the colonel would make some kind of move against him, though the swiftness of Allen's actions caught him off guard. He estimated he was ten miles from the road junction near the farm when a Rebel scouting party cut him off. He looked for a way around them, couldn't find one, and spent the night writing a letter to his family in New York, preparing them for his imminent capture.

  It happened the following morning, just after daybreak. Allen's betrayal became clear when the scouting party returned directly to their unit immediately after taking Logan prisoner. He did not have to be hit over the head to realize they had been sent out to assure his capture. Logan did not have time then to contemplate how the colonel had managed such timely intervention. Too many other incredible things had begun to happen.

  Mary Catherine's carefully copied dispatch, delivered into Confederate hands by Rose and Megan, and sent on to the rebel troops at Chancellorsville, was no mere correspondence now, but a true godsend. General Robert E. Lee took fierce exception to Major General Hooker's boast to President Lincoln, "The rebel army is now the legitimate property of the Army of the Potomac." Since the Union general made his boast based on superior Union forces and superior tactical positioning, but did not account for the fact that no shots had yet been fired, nor any flag raised, Lee found Hooker's brash statement a trifle premature.

  In a daring series of maneuvers Lee split his army into three sections, and over the next four days, from May 1 to May 4, drove Hooker and the Union forces back across the Rappahannock River. In terms of casualties it was not the decisive victory Lee could have wished for. Although the South suffered fewer losses, the percentage of deaths in relation to troop strength was far greater than the North's. Still, the victory kept the Union at bay and opened up Lee's second drive into the North, a drive that would culminate in a sleepy little Pennsylvania village called Gettysburg.

  Chapter 2

  November 1864—Richmond, Virginia

  "I got me twenty-four! Twenty-four! Lookee here!" John Edward held out his hand, keeping the palm flat. He had a black piece of cloth, ragged at the edges, lying over his palm. Standing out in small relief against the black background were two dozen nits that he had pulled from his beard.

  "Twenty-five," said Logan, reaching into his own dark beard. He carefully extracted the lice egg with a fine-toothed comb half the length of his pinky finger. He smiled at the group of six men surrounding him. "Gentlemen. Make good your wagers."

  "Dammit, Marshall!" Edward swore. "I'm thinkin' you're cultivatin' the critters! This wager weren't open to farmers!" He pointed accusingly to the lice comb that Logan was pocketing. "You never said nothin' about no equipment! Ain't fair!"

  "Don't be a poor sport," one of the other men grumbled. "It was a good wager."

  Logan didn't say anything as the bounty started pouring in. He got half a potato from Billy Waters, a compass from the Covington twins, Able and Joe, a watch fob made from a lock of some sweetheart's hair, courtesy of Tom Jenkins, and two carrots—a plump, bright orange stump from Davey Powell, and a scrawny, limp one from John Edward. Logan wrapped everything into a kerchief and tucked the whole of it in a black lacquered box he had won on a previous wager. Thanking the others, he turned away, keeping the box securely under his arm, and went in search of other amusement.

  In Libby Prison amusement was whatever, wherever one could make or find it. Logan survived in part because he sought it out in the most unlikely places, and where it didn't exist, he created it.

  Richmond's Libby Prison was nothing more than a tobacco warehouse converted for warehousing Union soldiers. On the outside it was unimposing. Red-bricked and tidy, with uniform windows and well-maintained grounds, it appeared to be a satisfactory, even humane answer to the problem of what to do with Federal prisoners. But each evening, a few hours after dusk, when the dead were collected and taken to wagons waiting in the rear, Libby Prison's true nature was exposed.

  It was not planned, intentional cruelty that made the prison the site of pestilence, starvation, disease, and death. It was the ravages of war. Richmond was constantly besieged by Federal forces trying to force the great city and capital to its knees. As her citizens suffered shortages of food, inadequate medical supplies, and epidemics of typhus, the prisoners—blamed as they were by their caretakers for all the ill that had befallen the South—fared far worse.

  Logan Marshall knew the So
uth was losing the war. The guards would never say it in so many words, but their actions, the negligence and apathy, the increasingly common vicious act, the retaliatory strikes against the prisoners, told the story just as eloquently. Real news of the war was hard to come by. Each new prisoner had his own tale, frequently inaccurate and always self-centered. It was difficult to know the large picture when a man's worldview was confined to a small section of the battlefield and his battle had been lost.

  Logan had heard about Lee's defeat at Gettysburg in July of '63. Yet, seventeen months later, he still did not know that his brother David died there, or that his brother Christian had been seriously wounded. He did not know that by the time his letter reached Marshall House his mother was already dead of an illness she contracted while nursing the wounded. He didn't suspect that his father's grief was slowly killing him.

  On the contrary, Logan spent as little time as possible thinking about family—it hurt too much. Instead he thought about surviving Libby Prison, thanked God he had narrowly missed being sent deeper into the South, planned his escape, and plotted his revenge on Colonel Richard Allen. That, and the occasional amusement, was enough to keep him busy.

  The air inside Libby Prison was oppressive, stifling. In one part of the warehouse a thousand officers were confined to eight rooms. The stench was almost a visible thing, rising above bodies huddled for warmth in a cold room. Logan walked among the men, the exercise keeping him warm, and knew in his heart he probably could not survive another winter.

  His copper-threaded hair was dull, shaggy, and overlong. He kept it tucked inside the frayed collar of his shirt as a kind of insulation. His skin was pale from lack of sunlight—prison gray, they called it—and he was fifteen pounds underweight. He kept himself as healthy as he could by making, and usually winning, bets for extra bits of meat or vegetables, and exercising daily to keep some muscle tone. The downy scrub that had marked his chin in more youthful days was gone now. He had a full beard and mustache that, as proved by his wager, was home for a fair-sized colony of vermin.