Redeeming Gabriel (14 page)

“I asked Jamie if he’d ever heard of such a thing, but he busted out laughing.”

Gabriel let out a breath. “Who else?”

“I asked Portia if she knew anything about it—”

“You asked your mammy about an underwater boat?”

“For your information Portia is one of the smartest people I know! She’s got more rank than I do, for that matter, in the ‘railroad’ organization.” Camilla frowned at Gabriel. “You of all people shouldn’t be prejudiced.”

He raised his brows. “The woman is an uneducated slave. What would she know about a complicated military machine?”

“She’s as educated as I am.” At Gabriel’s snort, she stiffened. “Lady taught her to read and write, and she’s memorized big chunks of the Bible.”

“That’s certainly practical information.”

“You’re hopeless.” Camilla bounced to her knees and threw the napkin at him. “Why should I tell you anything else?”

“All right, cool down.” Gabriel propped his arms on his bent knees. “Let me think. Your brother probably paid no attention to you, and Portia has her own reasons to keep quiet. But in the future you’ve got to keep this between you and me. You understand?”

“Yes. But I want to help.”

“Then you’ve got to get me into your papa’s office. I don’t know where they’re building the vessel, and I can’t get Uncle Diron to talk. I want to find out where it is, look at it, see if it’s really a threat. And if it is…”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to destroy it—and the builders and financiers—and take the plans to Washington, so they can build one of their own.”

Camilla stared at him. “But that means Papa and your uncle!”

He looked away. “Do you think the general is involved in any way?”

“General Forney? I don’t know. We’ve hardly seen him since he came, he’s been so ill from his wounds. His personal staff cares for him, for the most part.”

“I need you to try to find out any orders he has from Richmond, plans he’s making for fortification of the city, particularly the forts down at the gulf.” Gabriel rubbed his temples. “You’re in a strategic position to gather intelligence, Camilla.”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she nodded. “There’s something else, Gabriel.”

“What?”

“It’s Harry. I got a letter from him this morning. Lady intercepted it.”

His hand shot out to grasp her wrist. “How did that happen?”

“Portia sometimes passes me important communication inside a hollow butter knife at breakfast. Lady must have suspected for some time—I don’t know, she just grabbed it and opened it.”

“So your family didn’t know you’d been corresponding with him. What did the old lady say?”

“It was strange. She didn’t seem near as mad as she was when I came home last Saturday wearing trousers. I think she almost felt sorry for me.”

“So as far as she’s concerned, it’s just a forbidden romance.” Gabriel’s lip curled.

“That’s right,” Camilla said evenly. “Harry’s in Corinth, preparing to march south with Grant.”

“He’s well, then?”

She nodded. “Yes, but he’s tired. He thinks Grant may attack Pascagoula, then Mobile.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Unlikely. Not enough at stake down here, as far as I can tell.” His black eyes glinted. “Except maybe for that fish boat.”

Chapter Eleven

“H
ow are you feeling this morning?” Camilla stood at the doorway of Jamie’s room with a breakfast tray, bringing with her the smell of sausage and eggs and Portia’s biscuits. She walked in, noting the fading yellowish cast of her brother’s face and the slight droop of his eyelids. The entire family was concerned that after a week he hadn’t completely rebounded from the fever. He spent most of the day in his bed looking out the window.

Still, Jamie was home, and he would recover. They were lucky he was alive. She touched the locket at her throat.

Jamie brightened as he looked up from his book. “My appetite must be coming back. That smells wonderful.”

“Oh, good!” Camilla beamed at him. He had eaten but little since Horace and Willie had half carried him up the stairs. Gabriel said hunger was a good sign.

She set the tray across his lap and pulled a ladder-backed chair close to the bed. The room, from curtains to furniture, was designed on Spartan lines. Navy checks on the bed and at the windows, simple braided rugs on the floors, plain pine dresser and armoire, and uncushioned wooden chairs. Her brother was a sailor through and through.

Jamie uncovered the plate and tucked into his breakfast with initial gusto, but his shrunken stomach filled quickly. “I can’t hold any more,” he said. He wearily laid down his fork and leaned back against the pillow.

“Portia’s going to come stomping in here and accuse me of starving you.” Camilla moved the tray to the dresser. “She’d force-feed you herself, if she weren’t so busy with the general and his staff.” When he smiled without opening his eyes, Camilla smoothed the sandy, unkempt hair from his forehead. “You need a haircut. I could get my scissors…”

Jamie opened one eye. “Did you come in here to cheer me up, or is this your way of sending me to an early grave from sheer irritation?”

Giving his hair a gentle tug, she sat down. “Jamie, please tell me you’re not going out again, with the blockade so tight. You almost didn’t make it through this time!”

“The Yankees can’t keep the
Lady C
from sailing. Chambliss pays me good money to make sure they don’t.”

“Is it true General Forney ordered all cotton to be burned or moved to the interior? Won’t that weaken our trade relationship with Europe?”

Jamie’s eyebrows climbed. “What’s got you worrying your pretty little head about trade deficits? General Forney knows what he’s doing.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense!”

Jamie sighed. “He’s afraid any cotton left down here will encourage the Federals to attack. I’d heard the general’s first inclination was to evacuate, but he’s promised to defend the city.”

Camilla picked up her brother’s spyglass propped against a water pitcher on the bedside table and aimed it at the open window. “My goodness, this is amazing! You can see all the way into—Jamie! That’s Mayella Honeycutt’s bedroom!”

He snatched the glass from her hand. “Believe me, I don’t feel like peeping into anybody’s bedroom.” He collapsed the instrument and placed it in the drawer of the table. “What were you going to say?”

Distracted by the possibilities of a spyglass, Camilla stared blankly at Jamie for a moment, then blinked. “You don’t think the Yankees will attack here, do you? I heard rumors in church Sunday that Grant’s marching south through Mississippi.”

Jamie sobered. “I heard that, too, but I doubt he’ll make it this far.”

Camilla swallowed hard. “What if Harry’s with him? Doesn’t the idea of fighting against your cousin—your best friend—give you the willies?”

“Harry chose his side.” His words echoed Lady’s. “And I chose mine. I choose to fight for independence and states’ rights. I didn’t vote for Mr. Abe Lincoln, and he’s not going to tell me how to run my life.”

“But what about Horace and Portia and Willie? Don’t you see that we’re doing the same thing to them? Running their lives without their say-so?”

Jamie’s wintry eyes told her she’d gone too far. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Frightened, she backpedaled. “Maybe not…I just wondered.”

“Camilla, you leave political maneuvering to your menfolk.” Jamie closed his eyes again. “I believe I’ll have one more biscuit before you take the tray. Oh, and ask Papa to stop in when he gets home tonight.”

Camilla squelched the urge to fling the tray at her brother’s head. Menfolk. If they were as quick to listen as they were to give orders, the world would be a better place.

The soil was still moist from an early afternoon rain shower as Camilla set her bucket of fertilizer on the garden path and pulled on a pair of work gloves. Dressed in her oldest gown, a faded black-and-yellow plaid two-piece protected by a white cotton apron, she knelt in front of her grandmother’s prize day lilies.

Lady supervised from the screened porch, one foot propped on a gout stool. “Don’t stint on the fish heads, miss!” she called.

Trying not to breathe, Camilla dug in.

Several days had passed since her conversation with Jamie. He’d given her a sharp look once or twice when the subject of the general’s plans to defend Mobile came up at family dinners; however, as his health returned, Jamie’s impatience to be back aboard his ship took precedence over concern for Camilla.

Relieved, she found other avenues of gathering information. The military personnel who tracked in and out of General Forney’s temporary quarters either ignored or patronized the slaves—and Camilla, too, for that matter. They spoke freely and disparagingly of Flag Officer Randolph’s “cockleshell gunboats” stationed near the city, wondering loudly if they would withstand a Federal attack.

There was talk, too, of a massive movement of Confederate troops through the city by rail. Camilla, a railroad man’s daughter, understood more of their conversation than they realized. Now that Corinth had fallen to the Union, the M & O was literally the only Confederate link by rail between east and west.

She stopped digging to shove her spectacles upward with the back of her wrist. The trouble was, she didn’t understand the implications of all the intelligence she absorbed. She’d memorized numbers of troops, commanders’ names, and often slipped back to her room to draw little maps of fortifications she heard described. To her untrained mind, however, it was mostly a soup of unrelated scraps of data.

Then there was the underwater boat. Short of rifling Papa’s study, she couldn’t see any way to discover its whereabouts, as Gabriel had asked her to. Portia refused to discuss it, Jamie was for obvious reasons out of the question, and Lady—

“Young man!” shrieked that matron with a sudden thunk of the cane against the wooden porch floor. “I’ll thank you to take those oversize boots out of my flower garden, if you please!”

A startled young officer murdered one more day lily before leaping onto the flagged path beside Camilla. Flushing, he met her eyes. “Sorry, miss—ma’am?”

“It’s quite all right. One less mouth for me to feed, so to speak.” She nodded toward the porch, where Lady sat drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. “It’s my grandmother who’s rather attached to the little blighters.”

He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his face. “I wasn’t watching—I’m newly appointed to the general’s staff and thought I’d take a shortcut—ma’am? Miss? Do you live here?” Admiration filled his blue eyes.

Camilla glanced down at her muddy dress and stinking gloves. “I do. I’m Miss Camilla Beaumont.”

He didn’t seem to mind that she had declined to offer her hand. “I’m Second Lieutenant Israel Duvall.” He grinned and bowed. “And I’m going to be
Private
Duvall if I don’t hurry. But,
miss,
I hope to see you again—very soon!” He turned to Lady with another engaging grin. “Sorry, ma’am!” Whistling, he continued around toward the front of the house, keeping to the path.

When he was out of sight, Camilla burst into giggles.

Lady contented herself with a dry smile as she leaned her chin on the knob of her cane. “You’re slow on the uptake, my girl.”

“What do you mean?” Camilla picked up her trowel again.

“Fanny Chambliss would have secured an afternoon drive at the very least.”

Camilla scowled. “I could do better than that.”

“Prove it to me. We’ll host a subscription ball—for the benefit of the troops, of course. The first girl to obtain a waltz with the lieutenant will be crowned queen of the ball.”

“That would hardly be fair, since I’ve already met him!”

Lady raised her thin brows. “And you think Fanny hasn’t? My dear, you greatly underestimate your foe.”

Wearing a new black frock coat, ruffled white shirt with starched collar and evening trousers, Gabriel stood at the Beaumonts’ front door. After Horace admitted him and took his hat, Gabriel stopped at the pier-glass mirror that dominated one wall of the grand foyer to straighten the knot of his black cravat. He had to credit Camilla for following through on her promise to get him into the house with the chance to rub shoulders with relaxed and—if he was lucky—slightly drunk Confederate officers.

He eased his way through the garden of ruffled hoop skirts that crowded the ballroom and stopped to take his bearings. The Beaumonts showed more taste than most nouveau riche Southern aristocrats. A rather fine military orchestra, stowed in a minstrel’s gallery overhead, was playing a lilting waltz. Great banks of flowers filled every surface and every corner, helping to cover the scents of so many warm bodies. Greek Revival-style columns, polished to a gleam, supported the ten-foot-high ceiling at wide intervals. The burgundy-colored silk draperies at the windows were woven with gold threads that glittered in the light of the magnificent crystal chandeliers. Expensive but not gaudy.

He scanned the room, hoping to catch sight of the master of the house. Mrs. St. Clair held court in one corner, rose-striped skirts spread about her. An officer in general’s uniform—presumably General Forney—sat beside her, receiving the addresses of several well-dressed ladies.

Gabriel waited for the set to end, then crossed the room, greeting acquaintances as he went. As he stopped to exchange pleasantries with an acquaintance, Gabriel felt a hand rest on his shoulder. He turned to find Jamie Beaumont, resplendent in black evening dress, grinning at him.

“Beaumont!” Gabriel smiled and offered his hand. “Good to see you up and about.”

Jamie shook hands. “Thanks to you and Camilla, I’m almost ready to take the
Lady C
out to sea again.”

“Glad to hear it, though I suspect you were on the mend already. Sounds like you’ve got another run through the blockade planned. Is that wise?”

Jamie frowned. “Why? Have you heard something?”

“No.” Gabriel shrugged. “It seems a man of your talents would choose to invest them more directly in the Confederate cause. There has to be a naval force down here at the gulf—”