The Velvet Shadow (14 page)

He looked at her with something pleased, proud, and faintly possessive in his expression, and Flanna averted her eyes from his intense gaze. Alden’s heart thumped against his rib cage when he heard her reply: “Roger, I’m sorry.”

Roger’s smile mutated into an expression of shock. “What?”

A look of discomfort crossed her delicate features. “We have spoken of this before. You honor me by this proposal, but I cannot marry you.”

Roger sank back to his heels, his face going slack in surprise. “But we talked about it. We agreed.”

“We agreed to wait. And that was before Fort Sumter.” She tried to smile at him, but the corners of her mouth only wobbled precariously. “I can’t marry you, Roger, because I have to go home. I can make no commitments until I know my father and brother are safe. I must go home, I must do what I can for my family. Later, perhaps, when all this is over…”

Her voice faded, and in the silence Alden felt a strange stirring of mingled hope and disappointment. He had wanted to hear that she could not marry Roger because she loved
him
, but that was a fanciful notion, completely insane. Apparently she cared more for her family than for either of them.

“Flanna, you can’t go home,” Roger was saying now. “It’s too dangerous for a woman to travel unescorted.”

“I have Charity.”

“Your maid is no protection at all. The railroad lines aren’t safe.”

“I’m not going by rail.” A faint smile ruffled her mouth. “I’m going with the army. When you go south”—Alden’s heart skipped a beat when she shifted her gaze to him—“I’m going too. Massachusetts gave me my medical degree, and I will repay the state by serving as a physician for as long as I can. When we are close enough to South Carolina, I’m leaving to find my family.”

“That’s insane!” In his excitement, Roger stood and knocked over his empty glass. Alden merely stared at her, too startled to speak.

“Why is it insane?” Flanna’s sweet demeanor vanished, replaced by a glorious indignation. “I told you I had to return to Charleston. Didn’t you believe me?”

“You can’t—it has never—” Roger’s nostrils flared as he sputtered helplessly, then he pointed at Alden. “Tell her, brother!”

Surprised to find himself in the middle of their argument, Alden could not think straight. A thousand random thoughts ricocheted through his mind, and when he heard his own voice again, it seemed to come from someplace outside his body. “You can’t go with the army, Miss O’Connor. Even if you were commissioned as a physician, the army takes a dim view of deserters.” Pleased that he had managed a coherent sentence, he placed his hands on the table and forced himself to meet her gaze. “The United States has never—and probably
will
never—commission a female surgeon. You may be sure of it.”

Flanna’s chin dipped in a tense nod of agreement. “That may be. But I’m not asking for a commission. I just want to travel with the
army until I am close enough to go home. I don’t want to
join
the army; I want to
serve
it for a time.”

Alden tapped the table and smiled without humor. “You don’t understand the army, Miss O’Connor. Women aren’t allowed to travel with a regiment—well, some camp followers are unavoidable, but you wouldn’t want—” He cleared his throat and backed away from a most immodest subject. “Let me rephrase my argument. No
respectable
women travel with the army. A few officers’ wives may visit briefly, but most gentlemen are wise enough to keep their women at home. An army camp is no place for a well-bred lady, Miss Flanna. You would hear things unfit for a woman’s ears, and you would certainly see sights no lady ought to see.”

Roger waved his hand. “There are no women in the army for you to treat, so how is it that you wish to serve?”

“I am a physician, Roger.” She swallowed hard, lifted her chin, and boldly met his gaze. “I don’t expect to operate upon men, but I can administer medicines for routine maladies and digestive upsets. Surely you believe me capable of dispensing castor oil.”

Alden stared, amazed by the power in her words and the strength of her defiance. No, she most certainly did not fit his image of a simpering Southern belle.

“Doctor O’Connor.” Alden deepened his voice as he stood. “If you are wise you will accept my brother’s proposal, remain in Boston until this matter of secession is settled, and live your life as a happily married woman. I should think that is the best course for a woman in your situation, and I would advise you to take it.”

“Would you now?” He heard defiance as well as a subtle challenge in her tone.

“Indeed,” he answered, bowing slightly, “but something tells me you will not listen.”

He left the room before she could inflame his senses again.

Flanna’s hope faded with springs blossoms. As she waited to hear from the War Department, Alden’s words echoed in her memory:
“The United
States has never commissioned a female surgeon
. “Apparently he was right, for each day Flanna asked Mrs. Davis for her mail, and each day the widow gave her a wintry smile and replied that nothing had come.

Occasionally on quiet Saturday mornings, Flanna and Charity walked the streets around Boston Common and watched the fledgling Massachusetts regiments drill. Since Roger had taken the initiative of forming his own company, he ensured himself a captaincy. Within three Weeks of his enlistment, he had procured the names of one hundred men from Beacon Hill and the outlying districts, more than enough for a company. He and his men were officially designated Company K, part of the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment. According to a newspaper article Flanna read, Mrs. Ernestina Haynes had personally agreed to financially support Company K, supplying uniforms, guns, and supplies for Roger’s one hundred men. A note near the end of the article added that Major Alden Haynes, Mrs. Haynes’s eldest son, had been appointed to oversee Company K and nine others in the still-forming regiment.

Flanna felt a lurch of excitement within her as she ran her finger over Alden’s name. She certainly had no business feeling this strange attraction to him—he was Roger’s brother, an officer in the enemy army, and thoroughly beyond her power to charm. He tended to turn his head when she looked his way, and only heaven knew what he really thought of her. And yet there was something about him she found irresistible and intriguing. “In another time and place perhaps,” she murmured, folding the newspaper so that his name lay safely out of sight. “But not now. And not here.”

Roger steadfastly maintained his belief in their forthcoming marriage. He wrote her nearly every day, accepting her reluctance to become publicly engaged during wartime and understanding her concerns for her loved ones at home. “When this war is over,” he wrote again and again, “then we shall be wed, and then everything will be wonderful. You will see, Flanna. Wait and see.”

No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on finding a way home, Flanna often thought of the brothers as she walked past the
military training grounds on her way to the hospital. With no word from her father and no other means of financial support, she had accepted a part-time position at the Boston Women’s Hospital. Each morning, after a perfunctory hour spent with Mrs. Davis’s havelock seamstresses, she and Charity went to the hospital where Flanna assisted with childbirth cases, changed bandages, and listened to a litany of female complaints. Any competent nurse could have performed her duties, and Flanna knew the administrator’s reluctance to trust her had less to do with her youth or gender than with her Southern heritage.

She walked a thin line, and she knew it. If by word or deed she did anything to insinuate that she favored the Confederate cause, she risked being cast out of the boardinghouse, her workplace, and Boston society. Though she didn’t particularly care about society, out of respect for the Haynes family she spent an hour after her hospital shift volunteering for the Sanitary Commission. The hours she spent rolling bandages went far to dispel the suspicion that Ernestina Haynes had harbored a Rebel in the bosom of her family. Though Flanna was thoroughly exhausted at the end of every day, she hurried back to the boardinghouse and forced her heavy eyelids to stay open while she searched the papers for news of home.

In May, Arkansas became the ninth state to secede, followed by North Carolina. Within days, representatives of the Confederate States of America named Richmond as their capital. June brought another secession as Tennessee became the eleventh state to join the Confederacy.

After eight weeks and four follow-up letters to the U.S. War Department, Flanna became convinced that Alden Haynes was right—the United States Army would not only reject her offer of assistance, they would not even dignify her letters with a reply. She cast about for another opportunity to serve the army, and in June learned that a female powerhouse, Dorothea Dix, had been appointed Superintendent of Women Nurses and authorized to hire women to nurse wounded soldiers. Flanna immediately sent another letter to Washington, this one addressed to Miss Dix. The answer arrived in mid-July: “Nursing
is a serious profession,” wrote Miss Dix. “Only serious young women over the age of thirty and plain in appearance need apply.”

Unjust! At twenty-four, Flanna knew more about medicine than Miss Dix ever would, but she would not even be allowed to serve as a nurse!

As Flanna struggled to overcome the gloom that pressed upon her, an equally gray cloud settled over Boston as the two armies met for the first time at Bull Run, near Manassas, Virginia. Within days reports of heavy Union losses filled the city, and the gay wartime gatherings turned grim. By late July belligerent Boston had been thoroughly sobered by the realization that the Union forces under General Irvin McDowell had been soundly defeated by the ragtag Rebel troops.

Flanna waited until Mrs. Davis and her seamstresses had dimmed the lamps and gone to bed, then she sneaked downstairs for a newspaper and took it up to her room. By the dim glow of that single flame, she anxiously skimmed the newspaper accounts of the battle.

“They came at us, yelling like furies,” one soldier told the reporter. “There is no sound like that Rebel yell this side of the infernal region. The peculiar corkscrew sensation that it sends down your backbone under these circumstances cannot be described. You have to feel it, and if you say you did not feel it, and heard the yell, you have never been there.”

“That day, July 21, will forever be known as Black Sunday,” wrote the reporter. “We are utterly and disgracefully routed, beaten, whipped by secessionists.” Horace Greeley, the Republican editor of the
New York Tribune
, urged Lincoln to make peace with the Confederacy and give up the struggle for unity. “On every brow sits sullen, scorching, black despair,” he was quoted as saying. “If it is best for the country and for mankind that we make peace with the Rebels, and on their own terms, do not shrink even from that.”

Flanna scanned each page, reading every item, until she finally found the information she sought—a listing of brigades and regiments engaged in the battle. The list of Confederate regiments actively engaged at Bull Run included the Second South Carolina under Colonel
Kershaw, the Third South Carolina under Colonel Williams, the Seventh South Carolina under Colonel Thomas Bacon, and the Eighth South Carolina under Colonel E.B.C. Cash, all part of the First Brigade. Reports indicated that ten men from those units had been killed.

Flanna smoothed the newspaper on her desk and clenched her eyes shut. Had Wesley enlisted in one of those regiments? She had heard nothing from her father since mid-April. Wesley was as enthusiastic as any of the Boston blue bloods; he had probably signed up long before the warning shots fired on Fort Sumter. He could easily be serving in the First or Second Brigade. Oh, if only she knew the name of his commanding officer!

An image of Wesley’s broad freckled face dropped like a rock into the pool of her heart, sending ripples of fear in all directions. He’d been her playmate and best friend for as long as she could remember, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. Panic like she’d never known welled in her throat, but she fought it down, knowing she could not release it.

She had a part to play, and so did Charity. No matter how badly they wanted to return home or how desperately they feared for their loved ones, they could not let one unguarded word or emotion slip the bonds of their hearts. They were prisoners in enemy territory, and, like a wounded bear, the foe was smarting from the unaccustomed sting of defeat and apt to turn vicious.

Both Flanna and Charity noticed that their reception at Mrs. Davis’s havelock sewing circle grew decidedly more chilly after the Battle of Bull Run. For a moment Flanna was tempted to stop her volunteer work, then she realized that any weakening of her resolve would only be interpreted as proof of her Southern sympathies. So she persisted in aiding the people who had become her adversaries, wrapping bandages and sewing havelocks until her fingers were chafed and sore.

And each day she read the newspaper, searching its pages by candlelight to see if she could discover any opening through which she and Charity could find their way home.